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1930What Makes a Sentiment Moral?In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics vol. 5, Oxford University Press. pp. 225-256. 2010.Update January 2010: The original title of the paper ('A Sentimentalist Solution to the Moral Attitude Problem') was too long for OUP, so I had to change it. This is the final draft.
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453There are many conceivable circumstances in which some people have to be sacrificed in order to give others a chance to survive. The fair and rational method of selection is a lottery with equal chances. But why should losers comply, when they have nothing to lose in a war of all against all? A novel solution to this Compliance Problem is proposed. The lottery must be made self-enforcing by making the lots themselves the means of enforcement of the outcome. This way no external authority is need…Read more
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935Ethics and Empirical PsychologyIn ChristenMarkus (ed.), Empirically Informed Ethics, Springer. pp. 279-305. 2013.In this paper, I examine six arguments concerning or making use of empirical psychological evidence in metaethics and normative ethics. Generally speaking, I find that the ambitious ones fail and the more modest ones ought to moderate their conclusions further.
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752Review of Meaning In Life: An Analytic Study by Thaddeus Metz (review)Ethics 125 (2): 600-605. 2015.
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532Hate and PunishmentJournal of Interpersonal Violence 1-19. 2014.According to legal expressivism, neither crime nor punishment consists merely in intentionally imposing some kind of harm on another. Crime and punishment also have an expressive aspect. They are what they are in part because they enact attitudes toward others—in the case of crime, some kind of disrespect, at least, and in the case of punishment, society’s condemnation or reprobation. Punishment is justified, at least in part, because (and when) it uniquely expresses fitting condemnation or othe…Read more
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1289Fittingness and IdealizationEthics 124 (3): 572-588. 2014.This note explores how ideal subjectivism in metanormative theory can help solve two important problems for Fitting Attitude analyses of value. The wrong-kind-of-reason problem is that there may be sufficient reason for attitude Y even if the object is not Y-able. The many-kinds-of-fittingness problem is that the same attitude can be fitting in many ways. Ideal subjectivism addresses both by maintaining that an attitude is W-ly fitting if and only if endorsed by any W-ly ideal subject. A subject…Read more
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University of HelsinkiDepartment of Philosophy (Theoretical Philosophy, Practical Philosophy, Philosophy in Swedish)Professor
University of Helsinki
Department of Philosophy (Theoretical Philosophy, Practical Philosophy, Philosophy in Swedish)
PhD, 2008
Helsinki, Finland