<p>This paper is about Soren Aabye Kierkegaards (1813-1855) philosophy regarding the relation between the aesthetic and the ethic stage. The result of the essay is a modification of the aesthetic problem. The suggestion is to convert part of Kierkegaard’s metaphysical claims into an epistemic approach. An epistemic approach means to hold a position of well grounded stipulative beliefs. The argument for this suggestion is that it’s not possible to decide the truth in Kierkegaard’s metaphysical claims and therefore is it more fruitful to take an epistemic position. This paper claims that for the aesthetic person an argumentation on an epistemic level should be enough to choose the ethic way of life.</p> / <p>Denna uppsats behandlar Sören Aabye Kierkegaards (1813-1855) filosofi med avseende på förhållandet mellan det estetiska och etiska stadiet. Resultat av uppsatsen faller ut i ett förslag till modifiering av Kierkegaards lösning på det estetiska problemet. Förslaget till modifiering går ut på att istället inta en epistemisk hållning till de metafysiska sanningsanspråk som görs i Kierkegaards filosofi. Med en epistemisk hållning menas en position som bygger på stipulativa välgrundade trosföreställningar. Argumentet för detta är att vi inte kan avgöra sanningsvärdet i Kierkegaards metafysik och därför är den epistemiska positionen mer fruktbar. Uppsatsen hävdar att för estetikern borde en argumentation på epistemisk nivå räcka för att välja det etiska.</p>

Denna c-uppsats behandlar Nietzsches avvikelse från Schopenhauers Världen som Vilja och Föreställning i verket Tragedins födelse. Uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka varför det för Nietzsche är möjligt att förena det apolliniska och det dionysiska medan det för Schopenhauer inte är möjligt att förena vilja och föreställning.

Enligt ett argument mot nonkognitivismen som många kritiker hänvisat till, så är denna teori oförenlig med förekomsten av så kallade ‘tjocka moraliska begrepp’. Argumentet har dock aldrig artikulerats och preciserats ordentligt, vilket lett till att det ofta misstolkats av både anhängare och kritiker av nonkognitivismen. I uppsatsen rekonstrueras och utvärderas argumentet såsom det formulerats av John McDowell. Enligt argumentet är nonkognitivismen bristfällig eftersom den inte både kan ge en tillfredsställande analys av tjocka moraliska begrepp och framställa moralisk argumentation och debatt som rationell. Uppsatsen visar dock att nonkognitivister kan undvika denna slutsats på flera sätt. Uppsatsen innehåller även en översikt över olika nonkognitivistiska perspektiv på tjocka moraliska begrepp. / Many critics of non-cognitivism have argued that the existence of ‘thick moral concepts’ constitutes a serious challenge to non-cognitivist views of moral language. While this argument is frequently invoked, it has never been clearly articulated. Hence, the argument is often misinterpreted by both friends and foes of non-cognitivism. In this thesis, John McDowell’s forceful rendering of the argument is reconstructed and evaluated. According to the argument, non-cognitivism is not an adequate metaethical view because it cannot both provide an adequate analysis of thick moral concepts and construe moral discourse as rational. It is argued in this thesis that there are several ways in which non-cognitivists can avoid this conclusion. The thesis also contains a survey of various non-cognitivist views on thick moral concepts.

Proponents of moral particularism have often sought support for their negative claim about moral principles in a doctrine called holism in the theory of reasons. According to holism, a feature that is a reason in one case may be no reason at all, or even the opposite reason, in another. The aim of this thesis is to investigate and elucidate the supposed connection between holism and particularism. This is done by considering the particularistic position embraced by Jonathan Dancy in his book Ethics without Principles and the arguments against the argument from holism recently put forth by Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge in their book Principled Ethics: generalism as a regulative ideal. In conclusion it is argued that holism does provide at least some support for the form of particularism which Dancy defends.

Denna uppsats är en kritisk granskning av Samuel P. Huntingtons modell att förstå världspolitiken utifrån, som han presenterar i boken The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Granskningen utgår från en analys av hans grundläggande begrepp, ”civilization” och ”clash”, och från ytterligare en analys av hur hans modell skiljer sig från andra modeller om världen. Med hjälp av dessa analyser diskuterar jag rimligheten i den tes som han ställer upp och konsekvenserna som hans förutsägelser och policyrekommendationer får, för att sedan kunna bedöma om hans modell är användbar eller inte. Min slutsats är att den inte är särskilt användbar, främst på grund av den oklara betydelsen av hans begrepp. En modell utifrån fler faktorer skulle istället ge oss en bättre förståelse av världen. / This paper is a critical examining of Samuel P. Huntington’s model for understanding world politics, that he presents in his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. The examining is based on an analysis of his basic concepts, “civilization” and “clash”, and on another analysis of how his model differs from other models about the world. With the help of theses analyses I discuss the reasonableness of the these he formulates and the consequences that his predictions and policy recommendations have, to be able to judge if his model is useful or not. My conclusion is that it’s not very useful, mainly because of the unclear meaning of his basic concepts. Instead, a model based on more factors would give a us a better understanding of the world.

This paper is about Soren Aabye Kierkegaards (1813-1855) philosophy regarding the relation between the aesthetic and the ethic stage. The result of the essay is a modification of the aesthetic problem. The suggestion is to convert part of Kierkegaard’s metaphysical claims into an epistemic approach. An epistemic approach means to hold a position of well grounded stipulative beliefs. The argument for this suggestion is that it’s not possible to decide the truth in Kierkegaard’s metaphysical claims and therefore is it more fruitful to take an epistemic position. This paper claims that for the aesthetic person an argumentation on an epistemic level should be enough to choose the ethic way of life. / Denna uppsats behandlar Sören Aabye Kierkegaards (1813-1855) filosofi med avseende på förhållandet mellan det estetiska och etiska stadiet. Resultat av uppsatsen faller ut i ett förslag till modifiering av Kierkegaards lösning på det estetiska problemet. Förslaget till modifiering går ut på att istället inta en epistemisk hållning till de metafysiska sanningsanspråk som görs i Kierkegaards filosofi. Med en epistemisk hållning menas en position som bygger på stipulativa välgrundade trosföreställningar. Argumentet för detta är att vi inte kan avgöra sanningsvärdet i Kierkegaards metafysik och därför är den epistemiska positionen mer fruktbar. Uppsatsen hävdar att för estetikern borde en argumentation på epistemisk nivå räcka för att välja det etiska.

<p>I denna uppsats presenterar och diskuterar författaren tre invändningar som riktats mot dygdetikern Rosalind Hursthouses förslag om vad som är en moraliskt riktig handling. Hursthouse menar att en handling är moraliskt riktig om den är vad en dygdig agent karaktärsenligt skulle göra i omständigheterna. Den form av invändningar som författaren presenterar och diskuterar i uppsatsen försöker visa på att Hursthouses förslag exkluderar handlingar som vanligen anses är rätt.</p><p>Författaren argumenterar för att en dygdetik lik den Neo-Aristoteliska dygdetik Hursthouse försvarar kan formuleras så att den undgår invändningar som presenteras i uppsatsen. Författaren föreslår att vi istället för att förstå Hursthouses förslag som om det gällde de faktiska handlingar som en dygdig agent gör, istället bör uppmärksamma att en dygdig agent följer handlingsmaximer vilka hon prövat under sin moraliska utveckling till att bli dygdig. Författaren föreslår vidare att det är huruvida en handling utgår från en maxim som karaktärsenligt kan ingå i ett dygdigt liv som är avgörande om den är moraliskt riktig eller inte.</p> / <p>In this paper the author presents and discusses three charges that have been raised against Rosalind Hursthouses virtue ethical account on what it takes for an action to be morally right. Hursthouse proposes that an action is right, if and only if, it is what a virtuous agent characteristically would to in the circumstances. All of the charges discussed and presented in the paper try to show that Hursthouses account excludes actions which we would like to say are morally right.</p><p>The author argues that a Neo-Aristotelian form of virtue ethics, like the one Hursthouse defends, can be formulated so that the charges can be avoided. The author proposes that, instead of understanding Hursthouses account as if it is only the very actions that virtuous agents perform that are morally right, we should observe that the virtuous agents are acting from maxims that they have tested during their development towards becoming virtuous agents. The author then proposes that an action is right if it can be traced from a maxim that can be a characteristic part of a virtuous life.</p>

Some scholars argue that the principle of voluntary informed consent is rooted in the Western ethos of liberal individualism; that it would be difficult to implement this requirement in societies where the norms of decision-making emphasize collective rather than individual decision-making (for example, Sub-Saharan Africa); that it would amount to “cultural imperialism” to seek to implement the principle of voluntary informed consent in non-Western societies. This thesis rejects this skepticism about the possibility of implementing the informed consent requirement in non-Western environments and argues that applying the principle of voluntary informed consent in human subjects’ research in Sub-Saharan African communal culture could serve as an effective measure to protect vulnerable subjects from possible abuses or exploitations. The thesis proposes the “multi-step” approach to informed consent as the best approach to the implementation of the principle in the African communal setting. The thesis argues that the importance of the “multi-step” approach lies in the fact that it is one that is sensitive to local culture and customs. On the question of whether the principle of voluntary informed consent should be made compulsory in research, the thesis answers that we have no choice in the matter.

For the last thirty years or so, there has been a search underway for a theory that canaccommodate our intuitions in regard to moral duties to future generations. The object ofthis search has proved surprisingly elusive. The classical moral theories in the literature allhave perplexing implications in this area. Classical Utilitarianism, for instance, implies thatit could be better to expand a population even if everyone in the resulting populationwould be much worse off than in the original. The main problem has been to find an adequate population theory, that is, a theoryabout the moral value of states of affairs where the number of people, the quality of theirlives, and their identities may vary. Since, arguably, any reasonable moral theory has totake these aspects of possible states of affairs into account when determining the normativestatus of actions, the study of population theory is of general import for moral theory. A number of theories have been proposed in the literature that purport to avoidcounter-intuitive implications such as the one mentioned above. The suggestions arediverse: introducing novel ways of aggregating welfare into a measure of value, revising thenotion of a, life worth living, questioning the way we can compare and measure welfare,counting people's welfare differently depending on the temporal location or the modalfeatures of their lives, and challenging the logic of axiological and normative concepts. Weinvestigate the concepts and assumptions involved in these theories as well as theirimplications for population theory. In our discussion, we propose a number of intuitively appealing and logically weakadequacy conditions for an acceptable population theory. Finally, we consider whether it ispossible to find a theory that satisfies all of these conditions. We prove that no such theory exists.

In this thesis, the main focus is on deontic logic as a tool for formal representation of moral reasoning in natural language. The simple standard system of deontic logic (SDL), i.e. the minimal Kripkean modal logic extended with the deontic axiom, stating that necessity (interpreted as obligation) implies possibility (interpreted as permission), has often been considered inadequate for this aim, due to different problems, e.g. the so-called deontic paradoxes. A general survey of deontic logic and the problems with SDL is made in chapter 1. In chapter 2, a system denoted Classical Deontic-Modal logic (CDM1) is defined. In this system, there is a primary obligation operator indexed to sets of possible worlds, and a secondary requirement operator, defined in terms of strictly necessary conditions for fulfilling an obligation. This secondary operator has most of the properties of the necessity operator in SDL. In chapters 3 and 4, it is argued that CDM1 is able to handle the SDL problems presented in chapter 1 in an adequate way, and the treatment of these problems in CDM1 is also compared with their treatment in some other well-known deontic systems. In chapter 5, it is argued that even though the problems related to quantification in modal contexts are relevant to deontic logic, these issues are not specific to deontic logic. In chapter 6, the relations between some controversial features of moral reasoning, such as moral dilemmas and “non-standard” deontic categories like supererogation, and deontic logic are discussed. It is shown how CDM1 can be modified in order to accommodate these features.