In Aasen by! I attempted to name a new city resulting from a merger of Ørsta and Volda in honour of Ivar Aasen, whose life work was instrumental in giving the Norwegian language much deeper roots in and forms from its old Norse tradition than what prevailed in the superceded Danicized versions.
A description of interests, as well as some online papers and lists of publications and talks are found below. You can also look me up in Cristin or in Orcid.
Positions
I am a Professor emeritus of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and Classics and the History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo and a CAPES researcher at Programa de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte in Natal in Brazil.
Education:
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 1993. Advisor: Anthony Brueckner. Committee: Anthony Brueckner, Nathan Salmon and William Forgie.
Candidate in Philosophy (C.Phil) in Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 1990.
I studied Philosophy and Logic as a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Stipendiat at the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Universität in Frankfurt am Main, 1985/86. At the time I planned on taking a doctorate there, and I was accepted as a Doktorand (doctoral student), just as those with a German Magister Artium degree, on the basis of my Norwegian education, written work and an oral Zwischenprüfung.
Candidatus magisterii (cand.mag) from the University of Bergen, 1985. I double majored in Philosophy and Economics, and had Logic, Mathematics and Social Science as minors.
Examen artium (reallinjen) at Ålesund Gymnas, 1976/79.
Some of my teachers:
At the University of Bergen I had seminars by Erik Brown, Nile Gilje, Arild Haaland, Kåre Johnsen, Vigdis Songe-Møller and Hans Skjervheim. In Frankfurt I followed seminars by Jürgen Habermas, Karl Otto Apel and Wolfgang Kuhlmann. At UCSB I had seminars from all my committe members as well as by Peter Hylton, Noel Fleming and Charlotte Stough. At UCLA I followed a seminar by David Kaplan and took a gradute seminar in logic by Alonzo Church (with an oral exam) in the spring of 1989.
Former positions:
Associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Tromsø, 1994/96.
University lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Trondheim (now the Norwegian University of Science and Technology), 1992/94.
Teaching Assistant at the University of Calfornia, Santa Barbara, 1989/92.
High-School teacher in Mathematics and Economics at Ålesund Videregående Skole avd. Langhaugen (now Spjelkavik Videregående Skole), 1987/88.
My civil service was for the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen, 1986/87.
Service:
Member of the advisory board for philosophy, Norwegian Research Council, 1994-97.
Referee for Journal of Symbolic Logic
Referee for The Review of Symbolic logic
Referee for Mathematical Reviews
Referee for Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logic
Referee for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Referee for Princípios: Revista de Filosofia
Referee for Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic
Guest position:
During the 2001/02 academic year I was a visitor at the pontifical University of Malta. In the fall of 2001 former university rector professor Fr. Peter Serracino Inglott and I had a seminar on the Problem of Evil for graduate Philosohy and Theology students.
Scholarships awarded:
When a student in Bergen I was twice awarded a scholarship from the L. Melzers Høyskolefond. As mentioned above, I was a DAAD scholar in Frankfurt am Main, 1985/86. The first year of my studies in California, 1988/89, was supported by the Education Abroad Program of the University of California and by Norge Amerika Foreningen through the John D. Archbold scholarship of its Nansen Fund. The following three years of my Californian sojourn was, in addition to my employment as a Teaching Assistant, supported by tuition and fee waivers from the Department of Philosophy through its endowed Ralph W. Church Fund.
Scientific and philosophical interests:
My interests in philosophy and beyond are quite broad; but one must focus. Since before my promotion in 1993 I have primarily been preoccupied with foundational issues in mathematics and semantics. This has resulted in the theory librationism (until recently I used the term "liberalism"), which is inter alia geared to deal with semantical and set theoretical paradoxes. Librationism offers a way to deal with paradoxes that is related to paraconsistent ones, though without giving up on or contradicting any theorems of classical logic. The semantics of librationism has an ancestry in Hans Herzberger's semi inductive approach to deal with semantical paradoxes, and related ones. Unlike paraconsistent approaches, the mathematical strength of librationism is immense (and in an important sense full) though yet to be precisely gauged. A cornucopia of important issues are potentially shed light upon in new and distinct manners by librationism. Many fields of exploration are opened up here, and they are all related to the deeper question as to precisely what mathematics librationism supports.
I have a strong interest in many topics in the philosophy of religion. To those who know their history of philosophy, it should come as no surprise that there is often a strong affinity between mathematical meditation and theological thinking.