• Citizen science and credit
    In Eaton Sarah Elaine (ed.), Handbook of Academic Integrity, Springer. 2023.
    Science is supposedly meritocratic, and this means that it is important for scientists to be familiar with the mechanisms of how credit, for instance, in the form of authorship, acknowledgments, or awards, is bestowed. In citizen science – research activities in which volunteers are actively involved and where the research project and its success rely on those volunteer contributions – there are less clear guidelines and practices for awarding and valuing credit. This chapter introduces differen…Read more
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    Modern Biotechnology, Agriculture, and Ethics
    In Deborah C. Poff & Alex C. Michalos (eds.), Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics, Springer Verlag. pp. 1334-1338. 2021.
  •  105
    The Last Man Argument Revisited
    Journal of Value Inquiry 47 (1-2): 121-133. 2013.
  •  63
    Is the Precautionary Principle a Midlevel Principle?
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 22 (1): 34-48. 2019.
    In this article, we defend two claims about the precautionary principle. The first is that there is no ‘core’ precautionary principle that unifies all its different versions. It is more plausible to think of the different versions as being related to each other by way of family resemblances. So although precautionary principle x may have much in common with precautionary principle y, and y with z, there is no set of necessary and sufficient conditions that unify all versions of the principle. Ou…Read more
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    Guest Editors’ Introduction
    Philosophy of Management 8 (2): 1-2. 2009.
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    Citizen science (CS) has been presented as a novel form of research relevant for social concerns and global challenges. CS transforms the roles of participants to being actively involved at various stages of research processes, CS projects are dynamic, and pluralism arises when many non-professional researchers take an active involvement in research. Some argue that these elements all make existing research ethical principles and regulations ill-suited for guiding responsible CS conduct. However…Read more
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    52. An agent-centred approach to innovation for 21st century challenges of agriculture
    In Hanna Schübel & Ivo Wallimann-Helmer (eds.), Justice and food security in a changing climate, Wageningen Academic Publishers. 2021.
    Innovation is necessary to deal with challenges that climate change brings for agriculture, such as droughts, floods, pests and pathogens that enter new climatic regions, and challenges relating to the labour force. There is a dominant narrative that science and technology are the locus of innovation, and that the solutions developed can change systems. Indeed, history shows how the Green Revolution started a massive change in practices worldwide and gave science and technology the main role. In…Read more
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    The purpose of the present thesis is to apply philosophical methods to the ongoing debate of the precautionary principle, in order to illuminate this debate. The thesis consists of an Introduction and five papers. Paper I con-cerns an objection to the method of conceptual analysis, the Charge from Psychology. After a brief characterisation of conceptual analysis, I argue that the Charge from Psychology is misdirected. In Paper II, the method of conceptual analysis is applied to the concept of pr…Read more
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    The Philosophy of the Precautionary Principle
    In Armin Grunwald (ed.), Handbuch Technikethik, Metzler. pp. 151-154. 2013.
    Technology, in particular large-scale applications of it, offers enormous benefits. However, it also poses considerable, sometimes potentially catastrophic risks. For complex technical systems, the risks are not always reliably predictable.
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    Technology Neutrality in European Regulation of GMOs
    with Christian Munthe and Karin Edvardsson Björnberg
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 25 (1): 52-68. 2022.
    In order to responsibly protect certain cherished values, for instance, human or environmental health, privacy, or ‘human dignity’, societies see a need for oversight, guidance and regulation of de...
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    'Cornwallism' and Arguments against Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions
    with Karin Edvardsson Björnberg and Helena Röcklinsberg
    Environmental Values 29 (6): 691-711. 2020.
    Opposition against greenhouse gas emissions reductions is strong among some conservative Christian groups, especially in the United States. In this paper, we identify five scripture-based arguments against greenhouse gas mitigation put forward by a core group of Christian conservatives ('the Cornwallists'): the anti-paganism argument, the enrichment argument, the omnipotence argument, the lack of moral relevance argument and the cost-benefit argument. We evaluate to what extent the arguments exp…Read more
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    Commentary on Koplin and Wilkinson
    Journal of Medical Ethics 45 (7): 455-456. 2019.
    Anthropocentrism—the idea that humans are the most important beings there are—comes in many guises. One version of anthropocentrism states that only humans have full moral status. Those who argue for such a position usually refer to some trait that confers moral status and that only humans have. Suggestions include linguistic ability, self-awareness or rationality. However, regardless of what trait one picks it will not track the line between Homo sapiens and other species. You will always be ab…Read more
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    The Ethics of Consumption
    with Helena Röcklinsberg
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 29 (1): 1-4. 2016.
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    Plant Ethics: Concepts and Applications
    Environmental Ethics 40 (1): 95-96. 2018.
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    How to Label ‘Natural’ Foods: a Matter of Complexity
    Food Ethics 1 (2): 97-107. 2017.
    Food is sometimes labeled as ‘100% natural’ or as containing ‘all natural ingredients’. There is however controversy on how to justify, design and implement such labelling. This paper argues that since naturalness is not one single concept, but several ones, and those concepts typically allow degrees, so that things can be more or less natural, thus, this complexity should be reflected in labelling of foods. There is no obvious way of presenting an aggregate measure of a particular food item’s n…Read more
  •  70
    A Paradox Out Of Context: Harris And Holm On The Precautionary Principle
    Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 15 (2): 175-183. 2006.
    The precautionary principle is frequently referred to in various momentous decisions affecting human health and the environment. It has been invoked in contexts as diverse as chemicals regulation, regulation of genetically modified organisms, and research into life-extending therapies. Precaution is not an unknown concept in medical contexts. One author even cites the Hippocratic Oath as a parallel to the precautionary principle.
  •  82
    10 moral paradoxes – by Saul Smilansky
    Theoria 75 (1): 65-66. 2009.
    No Abstract
  •  63
    Book Symposium on The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics by Paul B. Thompson: The University Press of Kentucky 2010 (review)
    with Erland Mårald, Aidan Davison, David E. Nye, and Paul B. Thompson
    Philosophy and Technology 26 (3): 301-320. 2013.
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    Pragmatist Philosophical Reflections on GMOs
    with Payam Moula
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 28 (5): 817-836. 2015.
    This essay examines the public debate about the agricultural biotechnologies known as genetically modified organisms, as that debate is being carried out in its most dichotomizing forms in the United States. It attempts to reveal the power of sharply dichotomous thinking, as well as its limits. The essay draws on the work of Michel Serres, who uses the concept of the parasite to reconstruct or reframe fundamental dichotomies in western philosophy; it attempts a similar reframing of the public de…Read more
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    Empirical Methods in Animal Ethics
    with Payam Moula
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 28 (5): 853-866. 2015.
    In this article the predominant, purely theoretical perspectives on animal ethics are questioned and two important sources for empirical data in the context of animal ethics are discussed: methods of the social and methods of the natural sciences. Including these methods can lead to an empirical animal ethics approach that is far more adapted to the needs of humans and nonhuman animals and more appropriate in different circumstances than a purely theoretical concept solely premised on rational a…Read more
  •  53
    Supreme emergencies without the bad guys
    Philosophia 37 (1): 153-167. 2009.
    This paper discusses the application of the supreme emergency doctrine from just-war theory to non-antagonistic threats. Two versions of the doctrine are considered: Michael Walzer’s communitarian version and Brian Orend’s prudential one. I investigate first whether the doctrines are applicable to non-antagonistic threats, and second whether they are defensible. I argue that a version of Walzer’s doctrine seems to be applicable to non-antagonistic threats, but that it is very doubtful whether th…Read more
  •  47
    Laws of Fear (review)
    Environmental Ethics 29 (1): 107-110. 2007.
  •  29
    The ethics of consumption (edited book)
    with Helena Röcklinsberg
    Wageningen Academic Publishers. 2013.
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    Moral “Lock-In” in Responsible Innovation: The Ethical and Social Aspects of Killing Day-Old Chicks and Its Alternatives
    with Payam Moula
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 28 (5): 939-960. 2015.
    The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework that will help in understanding and evaluating, along social and ethical lines, the issue of killing day-old male chicks and two alternative directions of responsible innovations to solve this issue. The following research questions are addressed: Why is the killing of day-old chicks morally problematic? Are the proposed alternatives morally sound? To what extent do the alternatives lead to responsible innovation? The conceptual framewor…Read more
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    The Precautionary Principle and the Concept of Precaution
    Environmental Values 13 (4). 2004.
    The precautionary principle is frequently invoked in environmental law and policy, and the debate around the principle indicates that there is little agreement on what 'taking precautions' means. The purpose of the present paper is to provide an improved conceptual foundation for this debate in the form of an explication of the concept of precaution. Distinctions between precaution and two related concepts, prevention and pessimism, are briefly discussed. The concept of precaution is analysed in…Read more
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    Good agricultural practices certification schemes have been promoted to enhance agricultural sustainability. This study seeks to explain the adoption of GAP certification schemes through an analysis of the role of personal values in guiding such choice. It is a departure from approaches taken in previous studies in the area. Through the laddering interview technique of means-end chain analysis, a hierarchical value map was systematically schematized to illustrate the relationship between adoptio…Read more
  •  54
    Naturalness and de minimis Risk
    Environmental Ethics 27 (2): 191-200. 2005.
    In risk management, de minimis risk is the idea that risks that are sufficiently small, in terms of probabilities, ought to be disregarded. In the context of the distinction between disregarding a risk and accepting it, this paper examines one suggested way of determining how small risks ought to be disregarded, specifically, the natural-occurrence view of de minimis, which has been proposed by Alvin M. Weinberg, among others. It is based on the idea that “natural” background levels of risk shou…Read more
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    The problem we face today is that there is a huge gap between our ethical judgments about the ecological crisis on the one hand and our ethical behavior according to these judgments on the other. In this article, we ask to what extent a phenomenology of the ecological crisis enables us to bridge this gap and display more ethical or pro-environmental behavior. To answer this question, our point of departure is the affordance theory of the American psychologist and founding father of ecological ps…Read more