"The test of a first-rate intelligence is
the ability to hold two opposing ideas
in the mind at the same time and still
retain the ability to function."
F. Scott Fitzgerald
I was born and raised in Ørsta. When I was ten we moved to Ålesund. This is some towns and countries ago.
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 Orcid.
Positions
I am Professor emeritus of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and Classics and the History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo and 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 Journal of 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 about 2010, 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.
It is now clear that librationism, with few extra posits, interprets classical set theory.
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.
A colorful erratum: The article Cubes and Hypercubes of Opposition, with Ethical Ruminations on Inviolability, suffered a couple of mishaps when it was published in Logica Universalis, ISSN 1661-8297, 10(2-3), p. 373–376. The worst of them was that the colorful cube was printed in shades of grey, instead of decorating the sides with two transparent sides, and then a red, a yellow, a blue and a green side. The text of the article is not quite understandable because of this mishap, so I avail a colorfully updated version of the original article here: Cubes and Hypercubes of Opposition, with Ethical Ruminations on Inviolability