Papers by Sigurður Kristinsson
Studies in Philosophy and Education
Universities can sharpen their commitment to democracy through institutional change. This might b... more Universities can sharpen their commitment to democracy through institutional change. This might be resisted by a traditional understanding of universities. The question arises whether universities have defining purposes that demarcate possible university policy, strategic planning, and priority setting. These are significant questions because while universities are among our most stable long-term institutions, there is little consensus on what they are, what they are for, and what makes them valuable. This paper argues that universities can in fact be organized around a wide variety of purposes without thereby becoming any less real as universities. Normative discourse around universities should therefore be unafraid to consider novel ideas that test the limits of our current university concept and our entrenched practices. The argument applies fresh insights from feminist philosophy. Haslanger’s (Haslanger, S. 2000. Gender and race: (What) are they? (What) do we want them to be? No...
Veftímaritið Stjórnmál og stjórnsýsla
Academic freedom is essential to universities. The article discusses the nature and value of acad... more Academic freedom is essential to universities. The article discusses the nature and value of academic freedom and reports study results on how it is understood by university teachers in Iceland and what they see as threatening it. Two key aspects of academic freedom are identified: (a) free choice of topics and methods in research and teaching, and (b) a knowledge and integrity requirement. The article is based on data collected in two research projects, i.e. data from questionnaires and group interviews collected in the first project and interviews with individuals in the second project. The questionnaires were collected in 2011, the group interviews were conducted in 2014 and the interviews with individuals in 2019-2020. A total of 48 academic staff from three universities were interviewed, 26 females and 22 males. Participants were asked how they understood academic freedom and how it related to various aspects of their job as researchers and university teachers. The results show...
There are two major shortcomings in current psychotherapy outcome research: The standards that ar... more There are two major shortcomings in current psychotherapy outcome research: The standards that are used to evaluate psychotherapy (especially the way control conditions are set up in outcome research) are often not acceptable, and non-specific factors have been largely neglected, in part because of the “psychological placebo” metaphor. I argue that theories of psychotherapy need to specify further the role of non-specific factors in the development and maintenance of different disorders, and how non-specific treatment factors can be made to be more effective in therapy. This may be the major front in the future of psychotherapy research.
Introduction It has long been established practice in contemporary bioethics to refer to Immanuel... more Introduction It has long been established practice in contemporary bioethics to refer to Immanuel Kant as the original thinker behind some of the discipline‘s key concepts and arguments, such as the concept of respect for autonomy and the justificatory argument behind informed consent practices and regulatory frameworks. From time to time, Kant scholars have frustratingly complained that this established practice of referring to Kant for justification is far too often based on a superficial aqcuaintance with Kant‘s philosophical theories so that writers in bioethics frequently misrepresent Kant. The first half of this paper examines this complaint and argues that it is valid, at least as regards autonomy and informed consent. This conclusion means, however, that standard arguments and justifications in bioethics are suddenly undermined and it is not clear what should replace them. The second half of the paper explores the prospects for a Kantian normative background for informed con...
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2000
Leading accounts of personal autonomy are content-neutral: they insist that there are no a priori... more Leading accounts of personal autonomy are content-neutral: they insist that there are no a priori constraints on the content of the desires or values that might motivate an autonomous action. In Gerald Dworkin's provocative words, ‘the autonomous person can be a tyrant or a slave, a saint or sinner, a rugged individualist or champion of fraternity, a leader or follower.’ ‘There is nothing in the idea of autonomy that precludes a person from saying, “I want to be the kind of person who acts at the command of others. I define myself as a slave and endorse those attitudes and preferences. My autonomy consists in being a slave.” ’ John Christman similarly claims that ‘any desire, no matter how evil, self-sacrificing, or slavish it might be’ could be autonomously formed. The same seems to apply to Harry Frankfurt's view, that actions are autonomous if they stem from second-order volitions that reflect what the agent cares about; it puts no constraints on the content of what a per...
The virtual mentor : VM, 2009
Practically all human subjects research in the United States is regulated by the Federal Policy f... more Practically all human subjects research in the United States is regulated by the Federal Policy for Protection of Human Research Subjects [1]. That policy was formed by the Department of Health and Human Services in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and was later adopted by 14 federal departments and agencies. The policy's ideological foundation had been laid by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research [2]. The commission's 1978 report, generally known as the Belmont Report, identified three ethical principles as basic to the ethical guidance of research involving human subjects: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. This influential analysis has provided the background for ethics policy concerning human subjects research to this day. Despite its political success, the Belmont Report is not beyond philosophical criticism. In what follows, I will argue that the report makes a philsosphical error in its attempt to derive moral requirements for informed consent from the principle of respect for persons. Although neither the principle of respect for persons nor the need for robust informed consent policy will be questioned, I will argue that the report's manner of linking these two is based on a misguided conception of autonomy. Instead of invoking the autonomy of the consenter, the report should have based the duty to seek informed consent on the status of the researcher as an autonomous moral agent. The Belmont Report and Respect for Persons Since the publication of the Belmont Report, the standard ethical justification for informed-consent policy has been that obtaining informed consent is a way of respecting persons, which in turn is a fundamental moral requirement. The report states: Respect for persons requires that subjects, to the degree that they are capable, be given the opportunity to choose what shall or shall not happen to them. This opportunity is provided when adequate standards for informed consent are satisfied [3].
Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 2007
For decades, the greater part of efforts to improve regulatory frameworks for research ethics has... more For decades, the greater part of efforts to improve regulatory frameworks for research ethics has focused on informed consent procedures; their design, codification and regulation. Why is informed consent thought to be so important? Since the publication of the Belmont Report in 1979, the standard response has been that obtaining informed consent is a way of treating individuals as autonomous agents. Despite its political success, the philosophical validity of this Belmont view cannot be taken for granted. If the Belmont view is to be based on a conception of autonomy that generates moral justification, it will either have to be reinterpreted along Kantian lines or coupled with a something like Mill's conception of individuality. The Kantian interpretation would be a radical reinterpretation of the Belmont view, while the Millian justification is incompatible with the liberal requirement that justification for public policy should be neutral between controversial conceptions of the good. This consequence might be avoided by replacing Mill's conception of individuality with a procedural conception of autonomy, but I argue that the resulting view would in fact fail to support a non-Kantian, autonomy-based justification of informed consent. These difficulties suggest that insofar as informed consent is justified by respect for persons and considerations of autonomy, as the Belmont report maintained, the justification should be along the lines of Kantian autonomy and not individual autonomy.
nome.unak.is
The Neapolitan region in southern Italy bred one of the great figures in the history of philosoph... more The Neapolitan region in southern Italy bred one of the great figures in the history of philosophy: St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Aquinas's theories of action, morality, and law, all reflect a conception of human beings as essentially rational. It is in virtue of their ...
For decades, the greater part of efforts to improve regulatory frameworks for research ethics has... more For decades, the greater part of efforts to improve regulatory frameworks for research ethics has focused on informed consent procedures; their design, codification and regulation. Why is informed consent thought to be so important? Since the publication of the Belmont Report in 1979, the standard response has been that obtaining informed consent is a way of treating individuals as autonomous agents. Despite its political success, the philosophical validity of this Belmont view cannot be taken for granted. If the Belmont view is to be based on a conception of autonomy that generates moral justification, it will either have to be reinterpreted along Kantian lines or coupled with a something like Mill's conception of individuality. The Kantian interpretation would be a radical reinterpretation of the Belmont view, while the Millian justification is incompatible with the liberal requirement that justification for public policy should be neutral between controversial conceptions of ...
Nordicum-Mediterraneum
The question whether journalism constitutes a profession or not has been widely discussed in the ... more The question whether journalism constitutes a profession or not has been widely discussed in the literature in recent decades without a definite conclusion. Indeed some suggest that much of the contradictory views on professionalism and the professionalization of journalism may be traced to the unclear meaning of the very term “professionalism” or “professionalization” (Nolan 2008). Thus it is possible to put simultaneously forth plausible arguments suggesting de-professionalization of journalism on the one hand, and further professionalization of journalism on the other, based on different interpretations of the term “professionalism”. The terms “professional” and “professionalism” can refer to different social phenomena in different contexts. Thus an ongoing professionalization of journalism can be taking place in one sense at the same time as de-professionalization in a different sense, and of course, these different trends can also be taking place simultaneously in different par...
Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online
The Yearbook of Polar Law Online, 2011
Veftímaritið Stjórnmál og stjórnsýsla, 2014
Veftímaritið Stjórnmál og stjórnsýsla, 2012
Nordicum Mediterraneum
Introduction The Neapolitan region in southern Italy bred one of the great figures in the history... more Introduction The Neapolitan region in southern Italy bred one of the great figures in the history of philosophy: St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Aquinas's theories of action, morality, and law, all reflect a conception of human beings as essentially rational. It is in virtue of their ...
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Papers by Sigurður Kristinsson