• University of Helsinki
    Department of Philosophy (Theoretical Philosophy, Practical Philosophy, Philosophy in Swedish)
    Retired faculty
CV
  •  823
    Collective Goals and Communicative Action
    Journal of Philosophical Research 27 29-64. 2002.
    This paper gives an account of communicative action from the point of view of communication as a cooperative enterprise. It is argued that this is communication both on the basis of shared collective goals and without them. It is also argued that people can communicate without specifically formed illocutionary communicative intentions. The paper concludes by comparing the account given in the paper with Habermas’s theory of communicative action
  •  257
    Methodological solipsism and explanation in psychology
    Philosophy of Science 56 (March): 23-47. 1989.
    This paper is a discussion of the tenability of methodological solipsism, which typically relies on the so-called Explanatory Thesis. The main arguments in the paper are directed against the latter thesis, according to which internal (or autonomous or narrow) psychological states as opposed to noninternal ones suffice for explanation in psychology. Especially, feedback-based actions are argued to require indispensable reference to noninternal explanantia, often to explanatory common causes. Thus…Read more
  •  82
    Cooperation as Joint Action
    Analyse & Kritik 33 (1): 65-86. 2011.
    The paper studies cooperation as joint action, where joint action can, first, be conceptualized either individualistically in terms of the participants' individual goals and beliefs that the joint action is taken to serve. This is individualistic or ‛I-mode’ cooperation. Special version of it is ‛ pro-group I-mode’ cooperation, where the goals are shared. Second, cooperation can be of the kind where a group of persons act together as a group in terms of the non-aggregative ‛ we’ that they form. …Read more
  •  107
    Truth and best explanation
    Erkenntnis 22 (1-3). 1985.
  •  408
    Group beliefs
    Synthese 91 (3): 285-318. 1992.
    It is argued in this paper that there can be both normative and nonnormative, merely factual group beliefs. The former involve the whole social group in question, while the latter only relate to the distributions of personal beliefs within the group. The paper develops a detailed theory, called the positional account of group beliefs, to explicate normative, group-involving group beliefs. Normative group beliefs are characterized within this approach in terms of joint acceptances of views by the…Read more
  •  59
  •  46
    The paper is a reply to the critical reviews of the author’s A Theory of social Action by Anton Leist, Marvin Belzer, and Julian Nida-Rümelin in this journal. As to Leist’s main criticisms, which concern the notions of social action, social practical reasoning, individualism, and social norms, they are argued to be incorrect and unjustified. Belzer’s criticisms are on the whole well taken, and in fact all of them have been noted by the author in his later work.Belzer does not, however, consider …Read more
  •  59
    Putnam's realisms
    Theoria 45 (3): 114-126. 1979.
  •  102
    The paper is a response to some critical points and omissions in John Wettersten’s review of my recent book The Philosophy of Sociality: The Shared Point of View (Oxford University Press, 2007). I point out in this short paper that the reviewer has not discussed the most central notions in the book relating to its "we-mode" approach, i.e. collective acceptance, group reasons, the collectivity condition, collective commitment and their role in accounting for e.g. cooperation, social institutions,…Read more
  •  87
    On radical conceptual revolutions in social science
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 22 (2): 303-320. 1991.
    Summary The paper considers arguments for and against correction and elimination of the basic conceptual categories as well as theories of social science. It is argued that some correction of at least some basic social notions is called for. A great part of the paper consists in a conceptual investigation of such notion of correction in terms of different notions of corrective explanation
  • Contemporary Action Theory, Volume 1 (edited book)
    with Ghita Holmström-Hintikka
    Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1997.
  •  18
  •  100
  •  38
    Review of Keith Graham, Practical Reasoning in a Social World (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2002 (9). 2002.
  •  55
    What Does Doing One’s Part of a Joint Action Involve?
    Analyse & Kritik 11 (2): 197-207. 1989.
    The paper gives a conceptual clarification of what the notion of a part of a joint action (project, etc;) involves. The - mutually recognized - division of a joint action into parts can be based on social norms (viz. formal or informal rules, or proper social norms such as conventions or group specific social norms) or it can be based on agreement, coercion, or some analogous social mechanism. The paper also discusses the notions of a we-intention, of the intention to perform an action as one’s …Read more
  •  174
    On the structural aspects of collective action and free-riding
    Theory and Decision 32 (2): 165-202. 1992.
    1. One of the main aims of this paper is to study the possibilities for free-riding type of behavior in various kinds of many-person interaction situations. In particular it will be of interest to see what kinds of game-theoretic structures, defined in terms of the participants' outcome-preferences, can be involved in cases of free-riding. I shall also be interested in the related problem or dilemma of collective action in a somewhat broader sense. By the dilemma of collective action I mean, gen…Read more
  •  411
    Collective and joint intention
    Mind and Society 1 (2): 39-69. 2000.
    The paper discussed and analyzes collective and joint intentions of various strength. Thus there are subjectively shared collective intentions and intersubjectively shared collective intentions as well as collective intentions which are objectively and intersubjectively shared. The distinction between collective and private intentions is considered from several points of view. Especially, it is emphasized that collective intentions in the full sense are in the “we-mode”, whereas private intentio…Read more
  •  45
    This is a systematic philosophical and conceptual study of the notion of a social practice. Raimo Tuomela explains social practices in terms of the interlocking mental states of the agents; he shows how social practices are 'building blocks of society'; and he offers a clear and powerful account of the way in which social institutions are constructed from these building blocks as established, interconnected sets of social practices with a special new social status. His analysis is based on the n…Read more