NLA University College · Oslo
Dr. Åke Elden
I study the conditions under which judgment, responsibility, and explanation become possible — and how technological and institutional systems reorganize those conditions.
The programme is organised around philosophical problems, not domains: judgment and answerability; normativity and moral standing; explanation and object constitution; formation and agency; desire and social relations; institutions and infrastructure. Different disciplines and technologies provide contexts in which these problems become visible.
Artificial intelligence enters the programme as one revealing context — the setting in which transformations of judgment, responsibility, and institutional reason show up under load. The questions themselves precede it and outlast it.
Guiding question
“Which human capacities are presupposed, transformed, or concealed when artificial intelligence becomes part of institutional and personal decision-making?”
As you explore the site, look for how each project, publication, and concept traces one part of that question: the forms of judgment we still require, the responsibilities we distribute, the explanations we trust, and the human capacities that must be cultivated if institutions and technologies are to remain answerable to us.
Research themes
Six problem areas, one programme
Theme 01
Judgment, Answerability and Institutional Reason
How institutional judgment, answerability, and provenance are reorganised when reasoning is delegated.
Theme 02
Normativity, Moral Standing and Ethical Disclosure
The conditions under which moral claims arise, and the difference between admission to consideration and priority within it.
Theme 03
Formation, Agency and the Human Subject
Moral and subject formation under conditions of optimisation and technological mediation.
Theme 04
Desire, Comparison and Social Relations
Mimetic desire, comparative entitlement, and the platform mediation of grievance and social violence.
Theme 05
Explanation, Object Constitution and Philosophy of Science
Explanatory entitlement, object constitution, and the inferential license of scientific and statistical models.
Theme 06
Institutions, Infrastructure and Technological Mediation
Epistemic infrastructure, institutional friction, and the automation of institutional functions.