-
756The purpose of this presentation is to introduce both the concept of risk and the precautionary principle, that is a major policy principle in present-day risk management. Since risk has been the subject of many misconceptions I will do this in large part by criticizing seven views on risk that I believe to have caused considerable confusion both among scientists and policy-makers. But before looking at the seven myths of risk, let us begin with the basic issue of defining “risk”. The word “risk…Read more
-
30Similarity semantics and minimal changes of beliefErkenntnis 37 (3): 401-429. 1992.Different similarity relations on sets are introduced, and their logical properties are investigated. Close relationships are shown to hold between similarity relations that are based on symmetrical difference and operators of belief contraction that are based on relational selection functions. Two new rationality criteria for minimal belief contraction, the maximizing property and the reducing property, are proposed
-
Review of Peter T. Manicas: A history and philosophy of the social sciences (review)Theoria 54 (2): 148. 1988.
-
14Some Solved and Unsolved Remainder EquationsMathematical Logic Quarterly 41 (3): 362-368. 1995.The remainder set A⟂B of a set of sentences A modulo a set of sentences B is the set of all maximal subsets of A not implying any element of B. A remainder equation is an expression containing remainder sets, such as {A} = B⟂X, in which at least one set is unknown. Solutions to some classes of remainder equations are reported, and some unsolved problems are listed
-
64Specified Meet ContractionErkenntnis 69 (1): 31-54. 2008.Specified meet contraction is the operation defined by the identity where ∼ is full meet contraction and f is a sentential selector, a function from sentences to sentences. With suitable conditions on the sentential selector, specified meet contraction coincides with the partial meet contractions that yield a finite-based contraction outcome if the original belief set is finite-based. In terms of cognitive realism, specified meet contraction has an advantage over partial meet contraction in that…Read more
-
Science and Technology: What They Are and Why Their Relation MattersIn Sven Ove Hansson (ed.), The Role of Technology in Science: Philosophical Perspectives, Springer Verlag. 2015.
-
8Three Approaches to Finitude in Belief ChangeIn T. Rønnow-Rasmussen B. Petersson J. Josefsson D. Egonsson (ed.), Hommage à Wlodek. Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Wlodek Rabinowicz, . 2007.
-
29Safe DesignTechné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 10 (1): 45-52. 2006.Safety is an essential ethical requirement in engineering design. Strategies for safe design are used not only to reduce estimated probabilities of injuries but also to cope with hazards and eventualities that cannot be assigned meaningful probabilities. The notion of safe design has important ethical dimensions, such as that of determining the responsibility that a designer has for future uses of the designed object.
-
10Review of: Elisabeth Andersson, Value in Ethics and Economics (review)Erkenntnis 45 (1): 133-136. 1996.
-
Recension av Amartya Sen: "Kollektiva beslut och social välfärd"Norsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift 10 (1): 28. 1989.
-
37Praxis relevance in scienceFoundations of Science 12 (2): 139-154. 2006.Science is praxis relevant to the extent that it guides goal-directed action by telling us how to act in order to achieve the goals. Investigations aiming at high praxis relevance are performed in various disciplines under names such as clinical trials, evaluation research, intervention research and social experiments. In this contribution, the notion of (direct) praxis relevance is delineated, and it is distinguished from related properties of science such as those of being applied and being pr…Read more
-
250Philosophical problems in cost–benefit analysisEconomics and Philosophy 23 (2): 163-183. 2007.Cost–benefit analysis (CBA) is much more philosophically interesting than has in general been recognized. Since it is the only well-developed form of applied consequentialism, it is a testing-ground for consequentialism and for the counterfactual analysis that it requires. Ten classes of philosophical problems that affect the practical performance of cost–benefit analysis are investigated: topic selection, dependence on the decision perspective, dangers of super synopticism and undue centralizat…Read more
-
24Review of Hans Rott, Change, choice and inference: A study of belief revision and nonmonotonic reasoning (review)Studia Logica: An International Journal for Symbolic Logic 77 145-147. 2004.
-
28Recovery and epistemic residueJournal of Logic, Language and Information 8 (4): 421-428. 1999.Two recent defences of the recovery postulate for contraction of belief sets are analyzed. It is concluded that recovery is defensible as a by-product of a formalization that is idealized in the sense of being simplified for the sake of clarity. However, recovery does not seem to be a required feature of the doxastic behaviour of ideal (perfectly rational) agents. It is reasonable to expect that there should be epistemic residues (remnants of rejected beliefs), but not that these should always s…Read more
-
151Science denial as a form of pseudoscienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 63 39-47. 2017.
-
26Reversing “Research Exceptionalism”American Journal of Bioethics 10 (8): 66-67. 2010.This Article does not have an abstract
-
593EKONOMEN: Nej, det vi alla borde enas om är i stället att göra en rationell avvägning mellan olika samhällsmål. Vi har i själva verket genomfört flera mycket avancerade forskningsprojekt inom det nya området contingent valuation of violence, CVV. På grundval av noggranna analyser har vi t ex konstaterat att en våldtäkt bör värderas som en kostnad av 1237000 kronor, räknat i penningvärdet den 1 juli 2001.
-
72Reversing the Levi identityJournal of Philosophical Logic 22 (6). 1993.The AGM (Alchourrón-Gärdenfors-Makinson) model of belief change is extended to cover changes on sets of beliefs that are not closed under logical consequence (belief bases). Three major types of change operations, namely contraction, internal revision, and external revision are axiomatically characterized, and their interrelations are studied. In external revision, the Levi identity is reversed in the sense that one first adds the new belief to the belief base, and afterwards contracts its negat…Read more
Areas of Specialization
13 more
Areas of Interest
13 more