<p>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 precaution which is ana-lysed in terms of precautionary actions. The purpose is explicatory. A definition involving three necessary and jointly sufficient conditions is proposed, and the implications of this analysis for the debate on the pre-cautionary principle are discussed. Paper III attempts to provide an ana-lytical apparatus which may be used for finding improved formulations of the precautionary principle. The approach is lexicographical. Several exist-ing and possible formulations of the precautionary principle are examined, and four common elements and a common structure of the precautionary principle are identified. It is suggested that the analytical apparatus pre-sented can be used in negotiations of the precautionary principle. Paper IV questions the soundness of some arguments against the precautionary prin-ciple. Five common arguments are discussed and rejected. In Paper V, two of these arguments are further discussed. I argue that an attempt at rejec-tion of the precautionary principle delivered by John Harris and Søren Holm is unwarranted, because their arguments against it are based on in-terpretations of the precautionary principle that ignore context. Paper VI deals with the idea of de minimis risk. After a discussion of the distinction between disregarding a risk and accepting it, I examine one way of deter-mining how small a risk ought to be in order to be disregarded, namely the use of natural risk levels as benchmarks. I argue that this approach fails, even if the distinction between what is natural and what is not natural can be upheld.</p>

<p>Examensarbetet behandlar frågan om värdegrunden i skolans vardag, vad värdegrunden bygger på och hur den gestaltas i pedagogik och annan verksamhet i skolan. Arbetet baseras dels på en litteraturstudie som syftar till att undersöka skolans historia, framför allt dess kristna påverkan och läroplansutvecklingen, samt en begreppsdefinition. Dels baseras det på en kvalitativ intervjustudie av 10 lärare i grundskolan. Intervjustudiens syfte är att undersöka lärares uppfattningar av vad värdegrunden handlar om och hur den kommer till uttryck i den dagliga verksamheten.</p>

<p>This thesis aims at answering the following questions:1) How can the existence of a state be justified?2) To what extent does the state have the right to restrict individual´s liberty of action?3) To what extent does the state have the right to <em>restrict or redistribute</em> any kind of "goods", and if so, which restrictions should be allowed on which"goods"?4) Can a moral theory be "goal-directed", and are there moral reasons that it should be "goaldirected"?</p><p>In order to answer these questions, I will analyze Robert Nozick´s and Michael Walzer´s answers to these questions, as presented in <em>Anarchy, State and Utopia</em> (1974) and <em>Spheres of Justice</em> (1983). My answers, which are founded on an argument for the necessity of freedom of choice and ambition-sensitivity in theories of justice, are results of a compromise between the ideas in these theories, but also partially on criticism of both theories.</p>

<p>The investigation aims to clarify to what extent non-conscious thought has efficacy in for instance decision making,and also examine some aspects of the question whether decisions are caused by free will. This is done by an analysisof new research in neuroscience, economics, the combination of the two within neuroeconomics, evolutionarytheory and especially the new theory of Unconscious thought (Nordgren & Dijksterhuis 2006), which will enjoyspecial scrutiny due to its recentness in the scientific field. A decision strategy ought to put high-level consciouscognition to use where it is most effective, and this is on a different level than the canonized one. Meta decisionmaking is decision making concerning which decisions ought to be made consciously. It is the area where the largestamount of freedom can be obtained wherein the largest amount of thought effort ought to be invested. There alsoseems to be no basis to assume that non-conscious decisions or for that matter emotively based decisions would beless "rational" than conscious ones. The strategy is also analyzed via happiness research to examine how to makedecisions render happiness rather than other values. The result stresses that one ought not to use economic or othermeasures in decision making, rather trust one's visceral intuitions to a larger extent since those are representations ofone's wishes. Empirical results established a connection between decision making, creativity and problem solvingpertaining to the evidence showing that also the latter benefits from unconscious thought rather than consciousthought. This new evidence ought to change our view of problem solving at large. Rather than it being a purelyconscious process one would reach better results in relying to a larger extent also on non-conscious processes.</p>

In this essay results are developed on two different levels. First, it is shown in demonstration that a phenomenological analysis on the lines of Roman’s Ingarden’s study of works in literature can be applied to Virtual Reality works, such as professional-simulators and video-games. In particular it can then be pointed out that: i) sound is separable from the scene, but using sound VR becomes enriched; ii) the main role in literature is left for the imagination, while in VR we find richness in concretization. Second, it is argued in discussion that works in VR can be qualified as works of art. These electronic works may have all the aesthetical qualities (based on the phenomenology of Roman Ingarden) of the works of art in the traditional sense. So, that paper has two objectives: an analysis of VR and the search for the status of VR in art.

In this dissertation I direct critique at a conception of self-deception prevalent in analytical philosophy, where self-deception is seen as a rational form of irrationality in which the self-deceiver strategically deceives himself on the basis of having judged that this is the best thing to do or, in order to achieve something advantageous. In Chapter One, I criticize the conception of self-deception as analogous to deceiving someone else, the so-called “standard approach to self-deception”. The account under investigation is Donald Davidson’s. I criticize Davidson’s outline of self-deception as involving contradictory beliefs, and his portrayal of self-deception as a rational and strategic action. I trace the assumptions involved in Davidson’s account back to his account of radical interpretation and argue that the problems and paradoxes that Davidson discusses are not inherent in self-deception as such but are problems arising in and out of his account. In Chapter Two, I present Sebastian Gardner’s account of self-deception. Gardner is concerned with distinguishing self-deception as a form of “ordinary” irrationality that shares the structure of normal, rational thinking and action in being manipulation of beliefs from forms of irrationality treated by psychoanalysis. I object to the way in which Gardner makes this distinction and further argue that Gardner is mistaken in finding support in Freud for his claim that self-deception involves preference. In Chapter Three, I present a different understanding of self-deception. I discuss self-deception in the context of Sigmund Freud’s writings on illusion, delusion, different kinds of knowledge, etc., and propose a view of self-deception where it is not seen as a lie to oneself but rather as motivated lack of self-knowledge and as a flight from anxiety. In Chapter Four, I discuss some problems inherent in the three accounts under investigation, for example, problems arising because first-person awareness is conflated with knowledge of objects.

This essay is called In the head of Garibaldi – a study about the portrayal of Garibaldi in biographies and focuses on the literary portrayal of Garibaldi in biographies published in the early 20th century and the early 21st century. The purpose of the essay is to describe the possible changes in the way of portraying Garibaldi in biographies and compare the portraying to the portrayal of Garibaldi that Garibaldi himself gives in the American translation of his memoirs, which were published in New York 1859.I have in this study used a constructivist approach with focus on the attributes, ideals and roles of Garibaldi. Research and thoughts from a wide field of science has been used, for example the works on nationalism by Elie Kedourie and Ernest Gellner. The thoughts on biographies as a scientific genre as described in the anthologies Att skriva människan (Ambjörnsson, Ringby &amp; Åkerman red.) and Med livet som insats (Rosengren &amp; Östling red.) has also been of the utmost importance of the study.The results of the study shows that there has been changes in the way of portraying Garibaldi in biographies, as showed in the more unbiased portrayals in the newer biographies. A larger focus on criticism of the sources is also apparent in the newer biographies. In a comparison between the biographies and Garibaldi‟s memoirs it stands clear that the memoirs and the biographies portrays and depicts the myth of Garibaldi, with more or less focus on fiction.

A transformative decision rule alters the representation of a decisionproblem, either by changing the sets of acts and states taken intoconsideration, or by modifying the probability or value assignments.Examples of decision rules belonging to this class are the principleof insufficient reason, Isaac Levi’s condition of E-admissibility, Luceand Raiffa’s merger of states-rule, and the de minimis principle. Inthis doctoral thesis transformative decision rules are analyzed froma foundational point of view, and applied to two decision theoreticalproblems: (i) How should a rational decision maker model a decisionproblem in a formal representation (‘problem specification’, ‘formaldescription’)? (ii) What role can transformative decision rules play inthe justification of the principle of maximizing expected utility?The thesis consists of a summary and seven papers. In Papers Iand II certain foundational issues concerning transformative decisionrules are investigated, and a number of formal properties of this classof rules are proved: convergence, iterativity, and permutability. InPaper III it is argued that there is in general no unique representationof a decision problem that is strictly better than all alternative representations.In Paper IV it is shown that the principle of maximizingexpected utility can be decomposed into a sequence of transformativedecision rules. A set of axioms is proposed that together justify theprinciple of maximizing expected utility. It is shown that the suggestedaxiomatization provides a resolution of Allais’ paradox that cannot beobtained by Savage-style, nor by von Neumann and Morgenstern-styleaxiomatizations. In Paper V the axiomatization from Paper IV is furtherelaborated, and compared to the axiomatizations proposed byvon Neumann and Morgenstern, and Savage. The main results in PaperVI are two impossibility theorems for catastrophe averse decisionrules, demonstrating that given a few reasonable desiderata for suchrules, there is no rule that can fulfill the proposed desiderata. In PaperVII transformative decision rules are applied to extreme risks, i.e.to a potential outcome of an act for which the probability is low, butwhose (negative) value is high. / <p>QC 20100622</p>

The Gift 2.0 - A Museological Study of donations of Objects and its Underlying Motives, is a study in order to explain why people choose to donate items for museums, rather than any other alternative.The empirical study consists of qualitative, semi-structured research-interviews conducted with seven selected curators from various museums, with extensive experience of the subject acquisition. I have chosen to only examine Swedish cultural-historical museums. The hypothesis that I assumed was first and foremost that the heritage sphere is what Pierre Bourdieu calls a field. The reason that people would donate objects to museums, is that the donation itself brings cultural capital to the donor, from people with the same habitus. Since I felt that Bourdieus theory of field, capital and habitus could not explain all the reason why people donate items to museum, my second hypotheses was that certain objects are what Annette Weiner called inalienable possessions, objects that at any cost may not be sold or bartered away. It is precisely the ability to keep the object outside of the commercial sphere that is the essential for an inalienable possession. Linked to this hypothesis I argued that museums act like a bastion of inalienable possessions, in which the donor can continue to keep the object while it has been given. My source material consists of the research interviews and secondary material that I have acquired during the study, consisting of literature, deed of gift and e-mail correspondence. I have analyzed both primary and secondary source material using my hypotheses. The results of this study verify that my hypothesis is valid to use as a musicological theory of gifts. The study is a two year master´s thesis in Museum and Heritage Studies.

<p>The risk assessment process and the subsequent risk management measures need tobe constantly evaluated, updated and improved. This thesis contributes to that workby considering, and suggesting improvements, regarding aspects like userfriendliness,transparency, accuracy, consistency, data reporting, data selection anddata evaluation.The first paper in this thesis reports from an empirical investigation of themotivations, intentions and expectations underlying the development andimplementation of a voluntary industry owned environmental classification systemfor pharmaceuticals. The results show that the purpose of the classification systemis to provide information, no other risk reduction measures are aimed for.The second paper reports from an evaluation of the accuracy and the consistency ofthe environmental risk assessments conducted within the classification system. Theresults show that the guideline recommendations were not followed in several casesand consequently alternative risk ratios could be determined for six of the 36pharmaceutical substances selected for evaluation in this study. When additionaldata from the open scientific literature was included the risk ratio was altered formore than one-third of the risk assessments. Seven of the 36 substances wereassessed and classified by more than one risk assessor. In two of the seven cases,different producers classified the same substance into different classificationcategories.The third paper addresses the question whether non-standard ecotoxicity data couldbe used systematically in environmental risk assessments of pharmaceuticals. Fourdifferent evaluation methods were used to evaluate nine non-standard studies. Theevaluation result from the different methods varied at surprisingly high rate and theevaluation of the non-standard data concluded that the reliability of the data wasgenerally low.</p> / QC 20100929