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Citizen science and creditIn 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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10Modern Biotechnology, Agriculture, and EthicsIn Deborah C. Poff & Alex C. Michalos (eds.), Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics, Springer Verlag. pp. 1334-1338. 2021.
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63Is 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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21Principlism and citizen science: the possibilities and limitations of principlism for guiding responsible citizen science conductResearch Ethics 1 (4): 174701612211165. 2022.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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752. An agent-centred approach to innovation for 21st century challenges of agricultureIn 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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12The 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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8The Philosophy of the Precautionary PrincipleIn 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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16Technology Neutrality in European Regulation of GMOsEthics, 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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24'Cornwallism' and Arguments against Greenhouse Gas Emissions ReductionsEnvironmental 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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19Angela Kallhoff, Marcello Di Paola, and Maria Schörgenhumer, eds.: Plant Ethics: Concepts and ApplicationsEnvironmental Ethics 40 (3): 303-304. 2018.
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17Commentary on Koplin and WilkinsonJournal 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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23How to Label ‘Natural’ Foods: a Matter of ComplexityFood 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
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70A Paradox Out Of Context: Harris And Holm On The Precautionary PrincipleCambridge 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.
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41Bioethics and Armed Conflict: Moral Dilemmas of Medicine and War, by Michael GrossCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 17 (1): 131-133. 2008.
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27Freedom of Cropping and the Good Life: Political Philosophy and the Conflict Between the Organic Movement and the Biotech Industry Over Cross-ContaminationJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 28 (5): 837-852. 2015.This paper begins by describing recent controversies over cross-contamination of crops in the United States and European Union. The EU and US are both applying the principle of freedom of cropping to resolve these conflicts, which is based on an individualistic philosophy. However, despite the EU and the US starting with the principle of freedom of cropping they have very dissimilar regulatory regimes for coexistence. These contradictory policies based upon the same principle are creating differ…Read more
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57The Moral Black HoleEthical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (3): 291-301. 2009.It is commonly believed that people become selfish and turn to looting, price gouging, and other immoral behaviour in emergencies. This has been the basis for an argument justifying extraordinary measures in emergencies. It states that if emergencies are not curtailed, breakdown of moral norms threaten (‘the moral black hole’). Using the example of natural disasters, we argue that the validity of this argument in non-antagonistic situations, i.e. situations other than war and armed conflict, is …Read more
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28Modern Biotechnology, Agriculture, and EthicsJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 28 (5): 803-806. 2015.
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41Public Perceptions of the Ethics of In-vitro Meat: Determining an Appropriate Course of ActionJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 28 (5): 991-1009. 2015.While in vitro animal meat is not yet commercially available, the public has already begun to form opinions of IVM as a result of news stories and events drawing attention to its development. As such, we can discern public perceptions of the ethics of IVM before its commercial release. This affords advocates of environmentally sustainable, healthy, and just diets with a unique opportunity to reflect on the social desirability of the development of IVM. This work draws upon an analysis of ethical…Read more
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49Evaluating Ethical ToolsMetaphilosophy 46 (2): 263-279. 2015.This article reviews suggestions for how ethical tools are to be evaluated and argues that the concept of ethical soundness as presented by Kaiser et al. is unhelpful. Instead, it suggests that the quality of an ethical tool is determined by how well it achieves its assigned purpose. Those are different for different tools, and the article suggests a categorization of such tools into three groups. For all ethical tools, it identifies comprehensiveness and user-friendliness as crucial. For tools …Read more
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179Has psychology debunked conceptual analysis?Metaphilosophy 37 (1). 2005.The philosophical method of conceptual analysis has been criticised on the grounds that empirical psychological research has cast severe doubt on whether concepts exist in the form traditionally assumed, and that conceptual analysis therefore is doomed. This objection may be termed the Charge from Psychology. After a brief characterisation of conceptual analysis, I discuss the Charge from Psychology and argue that it is misdirected.
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55Is Genetically Modified Food Unnatural?Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 28 (5): 807-816. 2015.This paper argues for the following four claims: the terms “natural” and “unnatural” are ambiguous. Genetically modified food is unnatural in some senses of the term “unnatural”. Natural food should be favored over unnatural food in some senses of the terms “natural” and “unnatural”. Genetically modified food is not necessarily unnatural in a sense that would offer a good reason for favoring food that is not genetically modified. The claims are defended by distinguishing four different senses of…Read more
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22Are Farmers in Alternative Food Networks Social Entrepreneurs? Evidence from a Behavioral ApproachJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 28 (5): 885-902. 2015.Social entrepreneurship, individual activities with a social objective, is used in this study as a conceptual tool for empirically examining farmers’ participation in alternative food networks. This study verifies whether their participation is driven by the social entrepreneurship dimension to satisfy social and environmental needs. We develop a more inclusive view of how social entrepreneurship is present among farmers participating in AFNs by using a behavioural approach based on three main p…Read more
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23The Profession and the Killer App, or What Environmental Ethicists Might Learn from Bioethics: A CommentaryEthics, Policy and Environment 18 (3): 275-282. 2015.In terms of output in the form of published work and attraction of resources, bioethics seems to be a more vibrant field than environmental ethics. In this commentary it is argued that bioethics is, in some respect, less humanistic than environmental ethics and that two factors––bioethics’ strong connection to a profession, and its access to an intellectual ‘killer app’––offer ways in which environmental ethicists might learn from the ‘success story’ of bioethics.
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Swedish University of Agricultural SciencesRegular Faculty
Areas of Interest
Metaphilosophy |
Philosophy of Action |
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |