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28Genes and Morality: New EssaysRodopi. 1999.Most public discussion has focused on those effects of genetic research that are considered in some way unwanted or unpleasant. For example, there has been much debate concerning the risks and the ethical appropriateness of genetic screening, gene therapy, and agricultural applications based on genetic techniques. It often claimed that genetic research may cause new problems such as genetic discrimination, stigmatization, environmental risks, or mistreatment of animals. Genes and Morality: New E…Read more
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21Regret and ObligationThe Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 12 24-29. 1998.In Albert Camus' 1950 play Just Assassins, terrorists are at work in nineteenth-century Russia. They kill people, and they all believe that there is a superior moral reason for doing so. But they also know that killing is wrong. In their own view, they are innocent criminals; innocent, because their action is justified, but criminals, because they kill. So tacitly they conclude that they deserve punishment that will remove the regret from their shoulders. Their execution, by the same despotic au…Read more
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18The moral relevance of cultural disadvantageAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 78 (3). 2000.This Article does not have an abstract
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18In this book the practical dimension of social justice is explained using the analysis and discussion of a variety of well-known topics. These include: the relation between theory and practice in normative political philosophy; the issue of justice under uncertainty; the question of whether we can and should unmask social injustices by means of conspiracy theories; the issues of privacy and the right to privacy; the issue of how certain psychological states may affect our moral obligations, in p…Read more
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16Eric Racine , Pragmatic Neuroethics: Improving Treatment and Understanding of the Mind-Brain . Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 31 (3): 228-231. 2011.
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15When a Person Feels that She Is Guilty and Believes that She Is Not GuiltyThe Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 9 149-152. 2006.Guilt feelings are an important part of our emotional life that is relevant to moral philosophy, and guilt feelings raise many theoretically interesting questions. One such question is the problem of how it is possible that sometimes people seem to feel guilty because of an act they have committed even if they believe that the act is not wrong and that it does not have any moral costs. A person raised in a religious family may have been taught that going to the theater is wrong, and even if she …Read more
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15On Disassociating Oneself from Collective ResponsiblitySocial Theory and Practice 23 (1): 93-108. 1997.
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13Are there Alternative Methods in Ethics?Grazer Philosophische Studien 52 (1): 173-189. 1996.Do all methods of moral justification resemble the method of reflective equilibrium in presupposing that moral judgment's being justified depends at least in part on its being appropriately related to our actual substantial moral views? Can a moral judgment be justified without such a presupposition? I shall distinguish three versions of the no-option argument According to any version of the no-option argument, there is certain fact which characterizes moral theories, and that fact implies that …Read more
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12The Place of Religious Arguments in Civic DiscussionRatio Juris 13 (2): 162-176. 2000.I shall consider whether morality requires citizens of democratic societies to advance secular reasons in public debates on political questions. Is it wrong to give purely religious reasons in political discussion? I shall argue that the moral acceptability of public religious arguments that are not supported with secular reasons depends on the political context we are discussing, and that often there is nothing wrong with using religious considerations. I shall also discuss the so‐called shared…Read more
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11The Social Concept of DiseaseTheoretical Medicine: An International Journal for the Philosophy and Methodology of Medical Research and Practice 17 (4): 353-361. 1996.In the discussion of such social questions as "how should alcoholics be treated by society?" and "what kind of people are responsible in the face of the law?", is "disease" a value-free or value-laden notion, a natural or a normative one? It seems, for example, that by the utterance 'alcoholism should be classified as a disease' we mean something like the following: the condition called alcoholism is similar in morally relevant respects to conditions that we uncontroversially label diseases and,…Read more
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10On the Nontechnical Limits of Brain ImagingCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 29 (4): 527-541. 2020.Since the advent of neuroimaging technologies, their limits and possibilities have captivated scientists and philosophers. Thus far, the debate has largely concerned technical limits of our capacity to “read minds.” This paper extends the discussion concerning the limitations of neuroimaging to issues that are not dependent on technical issues or on our understanding of the complexity of brain activities. The author argues that there is a serious chance that brain scanning cannot replace usual i…Read more
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8Adaptive Preferences and Self-DeceptionIn Juha Räikkä & Jukka Varelius (eds.), Adaptation and Autonomy: Adaptive Preferences in Enhancing and Ending Life, Springer. pp. 149. 2013.
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7Climate Change Conspiracy TheoriesIn Pellegrino Gianfranco & Marcello Di Paola (eds.), Handbook of Philosophy of Climate Change, Springer Nature. pp. 1161-1177. 2023.Climate change conspiracy theories raise many questions. Some of the questions are philosophical in nature. They include issues such as how to define “conspiracy theory” (a conceptual question), what the ethical status of conspiracy theorizing is (a moral question), and how decision-makers should deal with climate change conspiracy theories (a practical question). One way to define “climate change conspiracy theory” is to say that they are explanations that (1) refer to conspiracies, (2) are not…Read more
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2Rationality in Global and Local Contexts – Proceedings of the Research Project (edited book)University of Turku. 2007.
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |