Sharon Rider | Uppsala University (original) (raw)
Papers by Sharon Rider
Post-Truth, Fake News: Viral Modernity & Higher Education
This edited collection brings together international authors to discuss the meaning and purpose o... more This edited collection brings together international authors to discuss the meaning and purpose of higher education in a “post-truth” world. The editors and authors argue that notions such as “fact ...
Fake News
Handbook of the Anthropocene
AI and the future of humanity: ChatGPT-4, philosophy and education – Critical responses
Educational Philosophy and Theory
Twitter and the aphoristic (re)turn in thought, knowledge and education
Educational Philosophy and Theory
These are six responses plus my reply to my original guest editorial that examined Twitter in rel... more These are six responses plus my reply to my original guest editorial that examined Twitter in relation to the aphorism in philosophy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2022.2109461
Transformations in Research, Higher Education and the Academic Market
Springer eBooks, 2013
Transformations in Research, Higher Education and the Academic Market : The Breakdown of Scientif... more Transformations in Research, Higher Education and the Academic Market : The Breakdown of Scientific Thought
The university as honest broker
Transformation of the University, Mar 8, 2022
En plats för tänkande : Essäer om universitetet och filosofin
Södertörns högskola, 2020
I ljuset av dagens heterogena kunskapskulturer är den övergripande ambitionen med den här boken a... more I ljuset av dagens heterogena kunskapskulturer är den övergripande ambitionen med den här boken att reflektera över relationen mellan universitetet och filosofin med öppningar för frågor som är av betydelse för demokratin och samhället i stort. I antologins sexton artiklar diskuteras filosofisk forskning och högre utbildning i förhållande till universitetets ständigt förändrade funktioner men också tänkandets förmåga att förändra verkligheten. Gentemot en bred idéhistorisk fond som sträcker sig från den tyska idealismen för drygt tvåhundra år sedan till vår egen tid är det ett försök att diagnostisera filosofins och tänkandets villkor, status och möjligheter inom dagens universitetsväsende. I vilka avseenden kan universitetet fortfarande fungera som en plats för tänkande
Review of Robert P. Pippin, Hegel's Idealsm: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness
Akademiska friheten allt mer hotad av toppstyrning
Analyse & Kritik, 2021
I propose that the ‘post-truth condition’, i.e., the vulnerability of our institutions for establ... more I propose that the ‘post-truth condition’, i.e., the vulnerability of our institutions for establishing and negotiating what is true and worth knowing, is not primarily a pathology, a susceptibility to external manipulation or coercion, as tends to be stressed in the literature, but has first and foremost to do with the unraveling of certain epistemic assumptions. In analogy with T.S. Eliot’s modernist notion that the attempt to capture and concretize an experience or a state of mind requires ‘objective correlatives’ which it conveys, I argue that the trope of post-truth to express the embattled status of expertise can be understood in terms of failed symbolization. In the second section, I spell out what this means in terms of Donald Davidson’s discussion of the problem of defining truth. In the last section, I propose a ‘poetics of political theory’ for understanding the post-truth condition.
Educational Philosophy and Theory
To assess frequency, clinical indications, and cumulative effective dose (CED) of patients underg... more To assess frequency, clinical indications, and cumulative effective dose (CED) of patients undergoing multiple 18 F-FDG PET/CT imaging. Methods Retrospective analysis of 18 F-FDG PET/CT scans performed at a University hospital for 11 years was done. Effective dose was computed from activity administered and dose-length-product. Results A total of 55,424 18 F-FDG PET/CT scans were performed in 32,658 patients. The average injected activity was 421 MBq and median 417 MBq. 24.2% of the patients were scanned 2-5 times in a year, 16.7% of them being unique patients (not counted as separate patient in different years). The maximum PET/CT scans in a year was ve. 23571 (72.2 %) patients underwent a single 18 F-FDG PET/CT scan, while 9087 (27.8%) unique patients underwent 2-23 scans during 11 years. 82% of the scanned patients had malignant disease, 2.4% among the patients with ≥ 2 18 F-FDG PET/CT scans in a year were with nonmalignant indications. 1.4% of patients received CED ≥100 mSv in one year from multiple 18 F-FDG PET/CT scans and 0.8% of them received ≥ 100 mSv in a year more than one time, the CED of 27.8% (9087 patients) who underwent 2 to 23 18 F-FDG PET/CT scans over 11-years ranged from 38 to 575 mSv (median: 271 mSv). Conclusion This rst and largest ever study covering analysis of 11-years' data of 18 F-FDG PET/CT patients showed that a sizeable number of patients, largely (82%) with malignant disease undergo recurrent imaging during one year and non-ignorable fraction exceed 100 mSv in one year.
Critical Theory as Metatheory of Education
Att sälja biologi : On explaining ourselves (scientifically): The case of language
Both sides of the debate sketched above assume an ideal content to the phenomenon thought to be e... more Both sides of the debate sketched above assume an ideal content to the phenomenon thought to be either biologically or socially acquired. Interactionists view language as a rule-governed cultural activity learned in interaction with others, while nativists see it as an innate capacity to generate syntactically correct sentences. This ideal content is then assumed in the structuring of tests and tasks that make up the empirical substance of the theory. The nature of the phenomena to be studied is different; they are studying different phenomena, namely, language as grammar, on the one hand, and language as social rules on the other. Insofar as they are studying different "objects" these separate fields of inquiry will naturally yield different results. The debate emanates from the assumption that there is some thing, "language", being studied. In this respect, one can say that the controversy is produced from a shared assumption, the implicit assumption being that...
This interview with Steve Fuller was conducted by e-mail between 3 September and 31 October, 2019... more This interview with Steve Fuller was conducted by e-mail between 3 September and 31 October, 2019, Professor Steve Fuller was sent six detailed, written questions regarding a number of his fundamen ...
Feltänkt om akademisk frihet
Uppsala Nya Tidning, 2014
Akademin är alls inte fri
Uppsala Nya Tidning, Jan 25, 2014
Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 2009
This paper examines the prevalent notion that that the production of knowledge, academic research... more This paper examines the prevalent notion that that the production of knowledge, academic research and teaching can and ought to be audited and assessed in the same manner as the production of other goods and services. The emphasis on similarities between industry and the academy leads to a neglect of fundamental differences in their aims and, as a consequence, a tendency to evaluate scientific research in terms of patents and product development and colleges and universities in terms of the labour market. The article examines the idea of the free academy, on the one hand, and compares and contrasts it to the idea of free enterprise, on the other. It is argued that the view of the university as a supplier of specific solutions for predetermined , non-scientific needs (a workforce with skills currently in demand, innovations for commercial partners, justifications for political decisions, etc) undermines the public legitimacy of university science and weakens the fabric of scientific training and practice. The article proposes that the university's main purpose must be to provide a recognized neutral, autonomous agency of rigorous, disinterested investigation and scientific education, which constitutes a necessary condition for an enlightened liberal democracy: an informed, capable and critical citizenry.
Objectivity in the Human Sciences
Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions, 2013
uu.se. Publications. ...
Human Freedom and the Philosophical Attitude
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2015
Abstract Attempts to describe the essential features of the Western philosophical tradition can o... more Abstract Attempts to describe the essential features of the Western philosophical tradition can often be characterized as ‘boundary work’, that is, the attempt to create, promote, attack, or reinforce specific notions of the ‘philosophical’ in order to demarcate it as a field of intellectual inquiry. During the last century, the dominant tendency has been to delineate the discipline in terms of formal methods, techniques, and concepts and a given set of standard problems and alternative available solutions (although this element has been both present and at times highly influential at least since Plato). One vital feature of the philosophical tradition that has played a certain rather subterranean but nonetheless indispensable role, which I will discuss in this article, is that of repeatedly and stringently calling into question the conditions of its own possibility. The Cartesian tradition (including Kant, Husserl, Popper and Weber) shares with the anti-philosophers (say, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, but even the later Wittgenstein) the insight that this questioning itself is and has always been a problem, perhaps the deepest problem, for philosophy. The idea that one has the right, even the responsibility, to pose questions that are non-standard, not comme il faut, perhaps even taboo, lay at the very heart of notions such as ‘the pursuit of truth’, ‘vita contemplativa’, and ‘philosophy as work on oneself’. On what grounds can one possibly assert such a right? In the Western tradition, it has most often been associated with a form of genuine doubt founded in deep engagement with some subject matter, i.e. the notion that one has a ‘problem’ demanding that one take responsibility for one’s beliefs and thoughts, both morally and logically. It seems to me that the meaning of this most basic attitude is something that each generation must rediscover for itself; indeed, recreate for itself in a new environment and under new conditions. Thus, the blindness of the past, in this self-understanding of philosophy, need not bind or blind us in the future. To the contrary, the European intellectual tradition can be seen as providing a series of perspicuous representations of intermittently faltering and flourishing attempts at asserting the viability of the idea of human freedom as essentially bound up with the pursuit of truth. As such, it is of necessity open to perpetual revision (even when it resists it).
The Humboldtian Tradition
2 An earlier version of this paper was published in Swedish as 'Högskolan bolognese: Otidsenliga ... more 2 An earlier version of this paper was published in Swedish as 'Högskolan bolognese: Otidsenliga betraktelser över den högre utbildningens mål och mening' in Torbjörn Friberg & Daniel Ankarloo (eds.), Den högre utbildningen-ett fält av marknad och politik (Hedemora: Gidlunds, 2012). I provide a more detailed discussion of the themes of the Enlightenment idea of autonomy and the Bologna Process in 'Higher Heteronomy: Thinking through Modern University Education' , in Sharon Rider, Ylva Hasselberg & Alexandra Waluszewski (eds.), Transformations in Research, Education and the Academic Market: The Breakdown of Scientific Thought (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012).
Post-Truth, Fake News: Viral Modernity & Higher Education
This edited collection brings together international authors to discuss the meaning and purpose o... more This edited collection brings together international authors to discuss the meaning and purpose of higher education in a “post-truth” world. The editors and authors argue that notions such as “fact ...
Fake News
Handbook of the Anthropocene
AI and the future of humanity: ChatGPT-4, philosophy and education – Critical responses
Educational Philosophy and Theory
Twitter and the aphoristic (re)turn in thought, knowledge and education
Educational Philosophy and Theory
These are six responses plus my reply to my original guest editorial that examined Twitter in rel... more These are six responses plus my reply to my original guest editorial that examined Twitter in relation to the aphorism in philosophy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2022.2109461
Transformations in Research, Higher Education and the Academic Market
Springer eBooks, 2013
Transformations in Research, Higher Education and the Academic Market : The Breakdown of Scientif... more Transformations in Research, Higher Education and the Academic Market : The Breakdown of Scientific Thought
The university as honest broker
Transformation of the University, Mar 8, 2022
En plats för tänkande : Essäer om universitetet och filosofin
Södertörns högskola, 2020
I ljuset av dagens heterogena kunskapskulturer är den övergripande ambitionen med den här boken a... more I ljuset av dagens heterogena kunskapskulturer är den övergripande ambitionen med den här boken att reflektera över relationen mellan universitetet och filosofin med öppningar för frågor som är av betydelse för demokratin och samhället i stort. I antologins sexton artiklar diskuteras filosofisk forskning och högre utbildning i förhållande till universitetets ständigt förändrade funktioner men också tänkandets förmåga att förändra verkligheten. Gentemot en bred idéhistorisk fond som sträcker sig från den tyska idealismen för drygt tvåhundra år sedan till vår egen tid är det ett försök att diagnostisera filosofins och tänkandets villkor, status och möjligheter inom dagens universitetsväsende. I vilka avseenden kan universitetet fortfarande fungera som en plats för tänkande
Review of Robert P. Pippin, Hegel's Idealsm: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness
Akademiska friheten allt mer hotad av toppstyrning
Analyse & Kritik, 2021
I propose that the ‘post-truth condition’, i.e., the vulnerability of our institutions for establ... more I propose that the ‘post-truth condition’, i.e., the vulnerability of our institutions for establishing and negotiating what is true and worth knowing, is not primarily a pathology, a susceptibility to external manipulation or coercion, as tends to be stressed in the literature, but has first and foremost to do with the unraveling of certain epistemic assumptions. In analogy with T.S. Eliot’s modernist notion that the attempt to capture and concretize an experience or a state of mind requires ‘objective correlatives’ which it conveys, I argue that the trope of post-truth to express the embattled status of expertise can be understood in terms of failed symbolization. In the second section, I spell out what this means in terms of Donald Davidson’s discussion of the problem of defining truth. In the last section, I propose a ‘poetics of political theory’ for understanding the post-truth condition.
Educational Philosophy and Theory
To assess frequency, clinical indications, and cumulative effective dose (CED) of patients underg... more To assess frequency, clinical indications, and cumulative effective dose (CED) of patients undergoing multiple 18 F-FDG PET/CT imaging. Methods Retrospective analysis of 18 F-FDG PET/CT scans performed at a University hospital for 11 years was done. Effective dose was computed from activity administered and dose-length-product. Results A total of 55,424 18 F-FDG PET/CT scans were performed in 32,658 patients. The average injected activity was 421 MBq and median 417 MBq. 24.2% of the patients were scanned 2-5 times in a year, 16.7% of them being unique patients (not counted as separate patient in different years). The maximum PET/CT scans in a year was ve. 23571 (72.2 %) patients underwent a single 18 F-FDG PET/CT scan, while 9087 (27.8%) unique patients underwent 2-23 scans during 11 years. 82% of the scanned patients had malignant disease, 2.4% among the patients with ≥ 2 18 F-FDG PET/CT scans in a year were with nonmalignant indications. 1.4% of patients received CED ≥100 mSv in one year from multiple 18 F-FDG PET/CT scans and 0.8% of them received ≥ 100 mSv in a year more than one time, the CED of 27.8% (9087 patients) who underwent 2 to 23 18 F-FDG PET/CT scans over 11-years ranged from 38 to 575 mSv (median: 271 mSv). Conclusion This rst and largest ever study covering analysis of 11-years' data of 18 F-FDG PET/CT patients showed that a sizeable number of patients, largely (82%) with malignant disease undergo recurrent imaging during one year and non-ignorable fraction exceed 100 mSv in one year.
Critical Theory as Metatheory of Education
Att sälja biologi : On explaining ourselves (scientifically): The case of language
Both sides of the debate sketched above assume an ideal content to the phenomenon thought to be e... more Both sides of the debate sketched above assume an ideal content to the phenomenon thought to be either biologically or socially acquired. Interactionists view language as a rule-governed cultural activity learned in interaction with others, while nativists see it as an innate capacity to generate syntactically correct sentences. This ideal content is then assumed in the structuring of tests and tasks that make up the empirical substance of the theory. The nature of the phenomena to be studied is different; they are studying different phenomena, namely, language as grammar, on the one hand, and language as social rules on the other. Insofar as they are studying different "objects" these separate fields of inquiry will naturally yield different results. The debate emanates from the assumption that there is some thing, "language", being studied. In this respect, one can say that the controversy is produced from a shared assumption, the implicit assumption being that...
This interview with Steve Fuller was conducted by e-mail between 3 September and 31 October, 2019... more This interview with Steve Fuller was conducted by e-mail between 3 September and 31 October, 2019, Professor Steve Fuller was sent six detailed, written questions regarding a number of his fundamen ...
Feltänkt om akademisk frihet
Uppsala Nya Tidning, 2014
Akademin är alls inte fri
Uppsala Nya Tidning, Jan 25, 2014
Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 2009
This paper examines the prevalent notion that that the production of knowledge, academic research... more This paper examines the prevalent notion that that the production of knowledge, academic research and teaching can and ought to be audited and assessed in the same manner as the production of other goods and services. The emphasis on similarities between industry and the academy leads to a neglect of fundamental differences in their aims and, as a consequence, a tendency to evaluate scientific research in terms of patents and product development and colleges and universities in terms of the labour market. The article examines the idea of the free academy, on the one hand, and compares and contrasts it to the idea of free enterprise, on the other. It is argued that the view of the university as a supplier of specific solutions for predetermined , non-scientific needs (a workforce with skills currently in demand, innovations for commercial partners, justifications for political decisions, etc) undermines the public legitimacy of university science and weakens the fabric of scientific training and practice. The article proposes that the university's main purpose must be to provide a recognized neutral, autonomous agency of rigorous, disinterested investigation and scientific education, which constitutes a necessary condition for an enlightened liberal democracy: an informed, capable and critical citizenry.
Objectivity in the Human Sciences
Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions, 2013
uu.se. Publications. ...
Human Freedom and the Philosophical Attitude
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2015
Abstract Attempts to describe the essential features of the Western philosophical tradition can o... more Abstract Attempts to describe the essential features of the Western philosophical tradition can often be characterized as ‘boundary work’, that is, the attempt to create, promote, attack, or reinforce specific notions of the ‘philosophical’ in order to demarcate it as a field of intellectual inquiry. During the last century, the dominant tendency has been to delineate the discipline in terms of formal methods, techniques, and concepts and a given set of standard problems and alternative available solutions (although this element has been both present and at times highly influential at least since Plato). One vital feature of the philosophical tradition that has played a certain rather subterranean but nonetheless indispensable role, which I will discuss in this article, is that of repeatedly and stringently calling into question the conditions of its own possibility. The Cartesian tradition (including Kant, Husserl, Popper and Weber) shares with the anti-philosophers (say, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, but even the later Wittgenstein) the insight that this questioning itself is and has always been a problem, perhaps the deepest problem, for philosophy. The idea that one has the right, even the responsibility, to pose questions that are non-standard, not comme il faut, perhaps even taboo, lay at the very heart of notions such as ‘the pursuit of truth’, ‘vita contemplativa’, and ‘philosophy as work on oneself’. On what grounds can one possibly assert such a right? In the Western tradition, it has most often been associated with a form of genuine doubt founded in deep engagement with some subject matter, i.e. the notion that one has a ‘problem’ demanding that one take responsibility for one’s beliefs and thoughts, both morally and logically. It seems to me that the meaning of this most basic attitude is something that each generation must rediscover for itself; indeed, recreate for itself in a new environment and under new conditions. Thus, the blindness of the past, in this self-understanding of philosophy, need not bind or blind us in the future. To the contrary, the European intellectual tradition can be seen as providing a series of perspicuous representations of intermittently faltering and flourishing attempts at asserting the viability of the idea of human freedom as essentially bound up with the pursuit of truth. As such, it is of necessity open to perpetual revision (even when it resists it).
The Humboldtian Tradition
2 An earlier version of this paper was published in Swedish as 'Högskolan bolognese: Otidsenliga ... more 2 An earlier version of this paper was published in Swedish as 'Högskolan bolognese: Otidsenliga betraktelser över den högre utbildningens mål och mening' in Torbjörn Friberg & Daniel Ankarloo (eds.), Den högre utbildningen-ett fält av marknad och politik (Hedemora: Gidlunds, 2012). I provide a more detailed discussion of the themes of the Enlightenment idea of autonomy and the Bologna Process in 'Higher Heteronomy: Thinking through Modern University Education' , in Sharon Rider, Ylva Hasselberg & Alexandra Waluszewski (eds.), Transformations in Research, Education and the Academic Market: The Breakdown of Scientific Thought (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012).