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46Bioethics in SwedenCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 15 (3): 285-293. 2006.Sweden is probably one of the most secularized nations in the world. Therefore religious arguments tend to play a smaller role in the public bioethical debate than in most other countries. Issues such as abortion, stem-cell research, and therapeutic cloning have been far less controversial in Sweden than elsewhere. Instead, other issues have dominated recent bioethical debates in Sweden, in particular those concerning privacy and the control over biological information about individuals
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46Coping with the Unpredictable Effects of Future TechnologiesPhilosophy and Technology 24 (2): 137-149. 2011.Available methods such as technology assessment and risk analysis have failed to predict the effects of technological choices. We need to give up the futile predictive ambitions of previous approaches and instead base decisions on systematic studies of alternative future developments. It will then be necessary to cope with mere possibility arguments, i.e., arguments in which a conclusion is drawn from a mere possibility that a course of action may have certain consequences. A five-step procedure…Read more
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46AGM 25 Years: Twenty-Five Years of Research in Belief ChangeJournal of Philosophical Logic 40 (2): 295-331. 2011.The 1985 paper by Carlos Alchourrón, Peter Gärdenfors, and David Makinson, “On the Logic of Theory Change: Partial Meet Contraction and Revision Functions” was the starting-point of a large and rapidly growing literature that employs formal models in the investigation of changes in belief states and databases. In this review, the first twenty-five years of this development are summarized. The topics covered include equivalent characterizations of AGM operations, extended representations of the b…Read more
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44Global and Iterated Contraction and Revision: An Exploration of Uniform and Semi-Uniform Approaches (review)Journal of Philosophical Logic 41 (1): 143-172. 2012.In order to clarify the problems of iterated (global) belief change it is useful to study simple cases, in particular consecutive contractions by sentences that are both logically and epistemically independent. Models in which the selection mechanism is kept constant are much more plausible in this case than what they are in general. One such model, namely uniform specified meet contraction, has the advantage of being closely connected with the AGM model. Its properties seem fairly adequate for …Read more
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43The Ethics of Doing EthicsScience and Engineering Ethics 23 (1): 105-120. 2017.Ethicists have investigated ethical problems in other disciplines, but there has not been much discussion of the ethics of their own activities. Research in ethics has many ethical problems in common with other areas of research, and it also has problems of its own. The researcher’s integrity is more precarious than in most other disciplines, and therefore even stronger procedural checks are needed to protect it. The promotion of some standpoints in ethical issues may be socially harmful, and ev…Read more
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43Iterated Descriptor Revision and the Logic of Ramsey Test ConditionalsJournal of Philosophical Logic 45 (4): 429-450. 2016.Two of the major problems in AGM-style belief revision, namely the difficulties in accounting for iterated change and for Ramsey test conditionals, have satisfactory solutions in descriptor revision. In descriptor revision, the input is a metalinguistic sentence specifying the success condition of the operation. The choice mechanism selects one of the potential outcomes in which the success condition is satisfied. Iteration of this operation is unproblematic. Ramsey test conditionals can be intr…Read more
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42Information Technology and the Organization of Philosophical ResearchTheoria 77 (4): 289-291. 2011.
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41The modes of valuePhilosophical Studies 104 (1). 2001.Contrary to the received view, decision theory is not primarily devoted to instrumental (ends-to-means) reasoning. Instead, its major preoccupation is the derivation of ends from other ends. Given preferences over basic alternatives, it constructs preferences over alternatives that have been modified through the addition of value object modifiers (modes) that specify probability, uncertainty, distance in time etc. A typology of the decision-theoretical modes is offered. The modes do not have (ev…Read more
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41Farmers’ experiments and scientific methodologyEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (3): 1-23. 2019.Farmers all over the world perform experiments, and have done so since long before modern experimental science and its recognized forerunners. There is a rich anthropological literature on these experiments, but the philosophical issues that they give rise to have not received much attention. Based on the anthropological literature, this study investigates methodological and philosophical issues pertaining to farmers’ experiments, including the choice of interventions to be tested, the planning …Read more
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41European public advice on nanobiotechnology—four convergence seminarsNanoEthics 3 (1): 43-59. 2009.In order to explore public views on nanobiotechnology (NBT), convergence seminars were held in four places in Europe; namely in Visby (Sweden), Sheffield (UK), Lublin (Poland), and Porto (Portugal). A convergence seminar is a new form of public participatory activity that can be used to deal systematically with the uncertainty associated for instance with the development of an emerging technology like nanobiotechnology. In its first phase, the participants are divided into three “scenario groups…Read more
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41Revising Probabilities and Full BeliefsJournal of Philosophical Logic 49 (5): 1005-1039. 2020.A new formal model of belief dynamics is proposed, in which the epistemic agent has both probabilistic beliefs and full beliefs. The agent has full belief in a proposition if and only if she considers the probability that it is false to be so close to zero that she chooses to disregard that probability. She treats such a proposition as having the probability 1, but, importantly, she is still willing and able to revise that probability assignment if she receives information that gives her suffici…Read more
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39Introduction to Formal Philosophy (edited book)Springer. 2012.In 1974, a wonderful little book came out entitled Formal Philosophy: Selected Papers of Richard Montague, edited by Richmond H. Thomason. The book was a beautiful testimony to the fact that formal methods may indeed clarify, sharpen and solve philosophical problems, defusing airy philosophical intuitions in clear, crisp and concise ways while at the same time turning philosophical wonder into scientific inquiry.
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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
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37Defining "good" and "bad" in terms of "better"Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 31 (1): 136-149. 1989.
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