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36Review of Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2002 (1). 2002.
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277Plural harm: plural problemsPhilosophical Studies 180 (2): 553-565. 2023.The counterfactual comparative account of harm faces problems in cases that involve overdetermination and preemption. An influential strategy for dealing with these problems, drawing on a suggestion made by Derek Parfit, is to appeal to _plural harm_—several events _together_ harming someone. We argue that the most well-known version of this strategy, due to Neil Feit, as well as Magnus Jedenheim Edling’s more recent version, is fatally flawed. We also present some general reasons for doubting t…Read more
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38Reply to Klocksiem on the Counterfactual Comparative Account of HarmEthical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (2): 407-413. 2020.In a recent article in this journal, I claimed that the widely held counterfactual comparative account of harm violates two very plausible principles about harm and prudential reasons. Justin Klocksiem argues, in a reply, that CCA is in fact compatible with these principles. In this rejoinder, I shall try to show that Klocksiem’s defense of CCA fails.
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69Is Our Existence in Need of Further Explanation?Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 41 (3): 255-275. 1998.Several philosophers have argued that our cosmos is either purposely created by some rational being, or else just one among a vast number of actually existing cosmoi. According to John Leslie and Peter van Inwagen, the existence of a cosmos containing rational beings is analogous to drawing the winning straw among millions of straws. The best explanation in the latter case, they maintain, is that the drawing was either rigged by someone, or else many such lotteries have taken place. Arnold Zubof…Read more
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2Torbjörn Tännsjö Hedonistic Utilitarianism, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1998, pp. vi + 185Utilitas 12 (2): 248. 2000.
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Omnium-gatherum. Philosophical Essays Dedicated to Jan Österberg on the Occastion of his Sixtieth Birthday (edited book)Uppsala Philosophical Studies. 2001.
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46Intransitivity Without Zeno's ParadoxIn Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen & Michael J. Zimmerman (eds.), Recent work on intrinsic value, Springer. pp. 273--277. 2005.
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88More Problems for the Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harm and BenefitEthical Theory and Moral Practice 22 (4): 795-807. 2018.The counterfactual comparative account of harm and benefit has several virtues, but it also faces serious problems. I argue that CCA is incompatible with the prudential and moral relevance of harm and benefit. Some possible ways to revise or restrict CCA, in order to avoid this conclusion, are discussed and found wanting. Finally, I try to show that appealing to the context-sensitivity of counterfactuals, or to the alleged contrastive nature of harm and benefit, does not provide a solution.
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On Some Impossibility Theorems in Population EthicsIn Gustaf Arrhenius, Krister Bykvist, Tim Campbell & Elizabeth Finneron-Burns (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Population Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2022.
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7Existence, Beneficience, and DesignIn Jan Österberg, Erik Carlson & Rysiek Śliwiński (eds.), Omnium-gatherum: philosophical essays dedicated to Jan Österberg on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, Dept. of Philosophy, Uppsala University. pp. 79-92. 2001.
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33Higher Values and Non-Archimedean AdditivityTheoria 73 (1): 3-27. 2007.Many philosophers have claimed that extensive or additive measurement is incompatible with the existence of "higher values", any amount of which is better than any amount of some other value. In this paper, it is shown that higher values can be incorporated in a non-standard model of extensive measurement, with values represented by sets of ordered pairs of real numbers, rather than by single reals. The suggested model is mathematically fairly simple, and it applies to structures including negat…Read more
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31Doing Harm: A Reply to KlocksiemUtilitas 35 (3): 229-237. 2023.In a recent article in this journal, Justin Klocksiem proposes a novel response to the widely discussed failure to benefit problem for the counterfactual comparative account of harm (CCA). According to Klocksiem, proponents of CCA can deal with this problem by distinguishing between facts about there being harm and facts about an agent's having done harm. In this reply, we raise three sets of problems for Klocksiem's approach.
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1Formal methods in ethicsIn John Skorupski (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Ethics, Routledge. 2010.
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30Consequentialism ReconsideredSpringer. 1995.In Consequentialism Reconsidered, Carlson strives to find a plausible formulation of the structural part of consequentialism. Key notions are analyzed, such as outcomes, alternatives and performability. Carlson argues that consequentialism should be understood as a maximizing rather than a satisficing theory, and as temporally neutral rather than future oriented. He also shows that certain moral theories cannot be reformulated as consequentialist theories. The relevant alternatives for an agent …Read more
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43Bontly on Harm and the Non-Identity ProblemUtilitas 31 (4): 477-481. 2019.The ‘non-identity problem’ raises a well-known challenge to the person-affecting view, according to which an action can be wrong only if it affects someone for the worse. In a recent article, however, Thomas D. Bontly proposes a novel way to solve the non-identity problem in person-affecting terms. Bontly's argument is based on a contrastive causal account of harm. In this response, we argue that Bontly's argument fails even assuming that the contrastive causal account is correct.
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102Causal Accounts of HarmingPacific Philosophical Quarterly 103 (2): 420-445. 2021.A popular view of harming is the causal account (CA), on which harming is causing harm. CA has several attractive features. In particular, it appears well equipped to deal with the most important problems for its main competitor, the counterfactual comparative account (CCA). However, we argue that, despite its advantages, CA is ultimately an unacceptable theory of harming. Indeed, while CA avoids several counterexamples to CCA, it is vulnerable to close variants of some of the problems that bese…Read more
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150Counterexamples to Principle Beta: A Response to Crisp and WarfieldPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (3): 730-737. 2003.The well‐known “Consequence Argument” for the incompatibility of freedom and determinism relies on a certain rule of inference; “Principle Beta”. Thomas Crisp and Ted Warfield have recently argued that all hitherto suggested counterexamples to Beta can be easily circumvented by proponents of the Consequence Argument. I present a new counterexample which, I argue, is free from the flaws Crisp and Warfield detect in earlier examples.
