Model uncertainty, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the science-policy interface.

The COVID-19 pandemic illustrated many of the challenges with using science to guide planning and policymaking. One such challenge has to do with how to manage, represent and communicate uncertainties in epidemiological models. This is considerably complicated, we argue, by the fact that the models themselves are often instrumental in structuring the involved uncertainties.

Stepping stone or stumbling block? Mode 2 knowledge production in sustainability science.

The concept of Mode 2 has often been seen as especially applicable to fields addressing grand challenges, such as climate change. Being a relatively new field-interdisciplinary in its approach, and focused on addressing such issues-sustainability science would appear to be a case in point. The aim of this paper is twofold: 1) to explore the perceived relation between Mode 2 and sustainability science, and 2) to advance the discussion of Mode 2 from a philosophical perspective.

Why resilience is unappealing to social science: Theoretical and empirical investigations of the scientific use of resilience.

Resilience is often promoted as a boundary concept to integrate the social and natural dimensions of sustainability. However, it is a troubled dialogue from which social scientists may feel detached. To explain this, we first scrutinize the meanings, attributes, and uses of resilience in ecology and elsewhere to construct a typology of definitions.

A philosophical view on concepts in psychiatry.

This essay first outlines a philosophical theory of concepts and then applies it to two areas of relevance to psychiatrists, especially forensic psychiatrists. In the philosophical theory, the respective roles of verbal and non-verbal definitions are illuminated, and the importance of the phenomenon of division of semantic labour is stressed. It is pointed out that vagueness and ambiguity of a term often result when the term is used for several practical purposes at the same time.