-
44Alternativt eller etablert? Hva er forskjellen?Www.Nifab.No. 2009.Hva er vitenskap og hva anser vi som vitenskaplighet? Dette er spørsmål som kan være verdt å se nøyere på før vi aksepterer at det er et klart skille mellom den etablerte skolemedisinen og alt det vi kaller ”alternativ medisin” eller ”alternativ behandling”. For hva er det egentlig som gjør noe til etablert og noe annet til et alternativ? Er den etablerte medisin mer vitenskapelig enn den alternative, ved at den for eksempel benytter seg av mer vitenskapelige metoder? Er resultatene til den etab…Read more
-
849What We Tend to MeanNorsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift 46 (1): 20-33. 2011.In this paper a dispositional account of meaning is offered. Words might dispose towards a particular or ‘literal’ meaning, but whether this meaning is actually conveyed when expressed will depend on a number of factors, such as speaker’s intentions, the context of the utterance and the background knowledge of the hearer. It is thus argued that no meaning is guaranteed or necessitated by the words used.
-
665This paper argues that the technical notion of conditional probability, as given by the ratio analysis, is unsuitable for dealing with our pretheoretical and intuitive understanding of both conditionality and probability. This is an ontological account of conditionals that include an irreducible dispositional connection between the antecedent and consequent conditions and where the conditional has to be treated as an indivisible whole rather than compositional. The relevant type of conditionalit…Read more
-
1236Double prevention and powersJournal of Critical Realism 8 (3): 277-293. 2009.Does A cause B simply if A prevents what would have prevented B? Such a case is known as double prevention: where we have the prevention of a prevention. One theory of causation is that A causes B when B counterfactually depends on A and, as there is such a dependence, proponents of the view must rule that double prevention is causation.<br><br>However, if double prevention is causation, it means that causation can be an extrinsic matter, that the cause and effect need not be connected by a cont…Read more
-
752Three dogmas of 'if'In A. Leirfall & T. Sandmel (eds.), Enhet i Mangfold, Unipub. 2008.In this paper I argue that a truth functional account of conditional statements ‘if A then B’ not only is inadequate, but that it eliminates the very conditionality expressed by ‘if’. Focusing only on the truth-values of the statements ‘A’ and ‘B’ and different combinations of these, one is bound to miss out on the conditional relation expressed between them. But this is not a flaw only of truth functionality and the material conditional. All approaches that try to treat conditionals as mere fun…Read more
-
1649Dispositional ModalityIn C. F. Gethmann (ed.), Lebenswelt und Wissenschaft, Deutsches Jahrbuch Philosophie 2, Meiner Verlag. 2011.There has been much discussion of powers or real dispositions in the past decade, but there remains an issue that has been inadequately treated. This concerns the precise modal value that comes with dispositionality. We contend in this paper that dispositionality involves a non-alethic, sui generis, irreducible modality. Dispositions only tend towards their manifestations; they do not necessitate them. Tendency is, of course, a dispositional term itself, so this last statement offers little by w…Read more
-
85Paul GriceIn Joose Järvenkylä & Ilmari Kortelainen (eds.), Tavallisen kielen filosofia, . 2012.Often we mean something else than what we have said explicitly. Consider the following scenario. I show up in a new flashy dress and ask my friend what she thinks of it. She always tries to help me improve my style and knows that I value her honest opinion. She looks at my dress and says: ‘Excellent fit, but have you gone colour blind?’. From what she says I do not take it that she is interested in whether I’ve got a colour vision deficiency. Rather, I take her to mean that she does not like the…Read more
-
889The conditional interpretation of general categorical statements like ‘All men are animals’ as universally quantified material conditionals ‘For all x, if x is F, then x is G’ suggests that the logical structure of law statements is conditional rather than categorical. Disregarding the problem that the universally quantified material conditional is trivially true whenever there are no xs that are F, there are some reasons to be sceptical of Frege’s equivalence between categorical and conditional…Read more
-
243Causes as powers: Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum: Getting causes from powers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 272pp, £35 HB (review)Metascience 22 (3): 545-559. 2013.
-
4530David HumeIn Linda Rustad & Hilde Bondevik (eds.), Kjønnsperspektiver i filosofihistorien, Pax Forlag. 1999.
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
General Philosophy of Science |