• University of Helsinki
    Department 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, Southern Finland, Finland
  •  1068
    Rationality as the Rule of Reason
    Noûs 55 (3): 538-559. 2021.
    The demands of rationality are linked both to our subjective normative perspective (given that rationality is a person-level concept) and to objective reasons or favoring relations (given that rationality is non-contingently authoritative for us). In this paper, I propose a new way of reconciling the tension between these two aspects: roughly, what rationality requires of us is having the attitudes that correspond to our take on reasons in the light of our evidence, but only if it is competent. …Read more
  •  725
    Valuing Anger
    In Myisha Cherry & Owen Flanagan (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Anger, Rowman & Littlefield. 2018.
    It is widely acknowledged that susceptibility to suitable emotional responses is part of what it is to value something. Indeed, the value of at least some things calls for such emotional responses – if we lack them, we don’t respond appropriately to their value. In this paper, I argue that susceptibility to anger is an essential component of valuing other people, ourselves, and our relationships. The main reason is that various modes of valuing, such as respect, self-respect, and love, ground no…Read more
  •  1033
    Epistemic Norms and Epistemic Accountability
    Philosophers' Imprint 18. 2018.
    Everyone agrees that not all norms that govern belief and assertion are epistemic. But not enough attention has been paid to distinguishing epistemic norms from others. Norms in general differ from merely evaluative standards in virtue of the fact that it is fitting to hold subjects accountable for violating them, provided they lack an excuse. Different kinds of norm are most readily distinguished by their distinctive mode of accountability. My thesis is roughly that a norm is epistemic if and o…Read more
  •  853
    Ethics and Empirical Psychology
    In 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.
  •  419
    There 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
  •  465
    Hate and Punishment
    Journal 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
  •  1219
    Fittingness and Idealization
    Ethics 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
  •  1692
    Moral Intuition in Philosophy and Psychology
    In Neil Levy & Jens Clausen (eds.), Springer Handbook of Neuroethics, Springer. 2015.
    Psychologists and philosophers use the term 'intuition' for a variety of different phenomena. In this paper, I try to provide a kind of a roadmap of the debates, point to some confusions and problems, and give a brief sketch of an empirically respectable philosophical approach.
  •  997
    Character and Blame in Hume and Beyond
    In Iskra Fileva (ed.), Questions of Character, Oxford University Press. 2016.
    Are we really to blame only for actions that manifest our character, as Hume claims? In this paper, I explore Hume's reasoning and the nature of blame in general. I suggest that insofar as blame comes in a relational variety as well as the more familiar reactive one, there may be something to be said for linking blame with character flaws after all.
  •  1121
    Pride, Achievement, and Purpose
    In Joseph Adam Carter & Emma C. Gordon (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Pride, Rowman & Littlefield. 2017.
    Pride in our own actions tells a story: we faced a challenge, overcame it, and achieved something praiseworthy. In this paper, I draw on recent psychological literature to distinguish to between two varieties of pride, 'authentic' pride that focuses on particular efforts (like guilt) and 'hubristic' pride that focuses on the whole self (like shame). Achievement pride is fitting when either efforts or traits explain our success in meeting contextually relevant, authoritative, and challenging stan…Read more
  •  2406
    Empathic feelings seem to causally influence our moral judgments at least sometimes. But is empathy necessary for our ability to make moral judgments? And is it a good thing if our judgments are based on empathy? This chapter examines the contemporary debate on these issues.
  •  420
    Working Hard and Kicking Back: The Case for Diachronic Perfectionism
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (1): 1-10. 2008.
    Dan Haybron has argued by counterexample that perfectionism fails as a theory of well-being. I respond by articulating two different versions of diachronic perfectionism, which takes into account the level of development and exercise of essential human capacities over the course of an entire lifetime.
  •  1721
    Reason, recognition, and internal critique
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 45 (4). 2002.
    Normative political philosophy always refers to a standard against which a society's institutions are judged. In the first, analytical part of the article, the different possible forms of normative criticism are examined according to whether the standards it appeals to are external or internal to the society in question. In the tradition of Socrates and Hegel, it is argued that reconstructing the kind of norms that are implicit in practices enables a critique that does not force the critic's par…Read more
  •  2565
    Intuition and Belief in Moral Motivation
    In Gunnar Björnsson (ed.), Moral Internalism, Oxford University Press. 2015.
    It seems to many that moral opinions must make a difference to what we’re motivated to do, at least in suitable conditions. For others, it seems that it is possible to have genuine moral opinions that make no motivational difference. Both sides – internalists and externalists about moral motivation – can tell persuasive stories of actual and hypothetical cases. My proposal for a kind of reconciliation is to distinguish between two kinds of psychological states with moral content. There are both …Read more
  •  850
    Sentimentalism, Blameworthiness, and Wrongdoing
    In Karsten Stueber & Remy Debes (eds.), Ethical Sentimentalism, Cambridge University Press. 2017.
    For ambitious metaphysical neo-sentimentalists, all normative facts are grounded in fitting attitudes, where fittingness is understood in naturalistic terms. In this paper, I offer a neo-sentimentalist account of blameworthiness in terms of the reactive attitudes of a morally authoritative subject I label a Nagelian Imp. I also argue that moral impermissibility is indirectly linked to blameworthiness: roughly, an act is morally impermissible if and only if and because it is not *possible* in the…Read more
  •  2185
    Meaning and Happiness
    Philosophical Topics 41 (1): 161-185. 2013.
    What is the relationship between meaning in life and happiness? In psychological research, subjective meaning and happiness are often contrasted with each other. I argue that while the objective meaningfulness of a life is distinct from happiness, subjective or felt meaning is a key constituent of happiness, which is best understood as a multidimensional affective condition. Measures of felt meaning should consequently be included in empirical studies of the causes and correlates of happiness.
  •  1976
    The rise and fall of experimental philosophy
    Philosophical Explorations 10 (2). 2007.
    In disputes about conceptual analysis, each side typically appeals to pre-theoretical 'intuitions' about particular cases. Recently, many naturalistically oriented philosophers have suggested that these appeals should be understood as empirical hypotheses about what people would say when presented with descriptions of situations, and have consequently conducted surveys on non-specialists. I argue that this philosophical research programme, a key branch of what is known as 'experimental philosoph…Read more
  •  563
    The central question of the branch of metaethics we may call philosophical moral psychology concerns the nature or essence of moral judgment: what is it to think that something is right or wrong, good or bad, obligatory or forbidden? One datum in this inquiry is that sincerely held moral views appear to influence conduct: on the whole, people do not engage in behaviours they genuinely consider base or evil, sometimes even when they would stand to benefit from it personally. Moral judgments thus …Read more
  •  469
    Favoring
    Philosophical Studies 172 (7): 1953-1971. 2015.
    It has become common to take reasons to form a basic normative category that is not amenable to non-circular analysis. This paper offers a novel characterization of reasons in terms of how we ought or it would be good for us to think in response to our awareness of facts, and thus rejects such Reason Primitivism. Briefly, for r to be a normative reason for A to φ is for it to be the case that A ought to conduct her φ-relevant thinking in a φ-friendly manner, given her awareness of r. In mechanis…Read more
  •  940
    Practical Reasoning
    In Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity, Oxford University Press. 2018.
    This chapter presents two contemporary pictures of practical reasoning. According to the Rule-Guidance Conception, roughly, practical reasoning is a rule-guided operation of acquiring (or retaining or giving up) intentions so as to meet synchronic requirements of rationality. According to the Reasons-Responsiveness Conception, practical reasoning is a process of responding to reasons we take ourselves to have, and its standards of correctness derive from what we objectively have reason to do, if…Read more
  •  820
    Empathy as the Moral Sense?
    Philosophia 45 (3): 867-879. 2017.
    In his recent work, Michael Slote argues that empathy is what Hutcheson called 'the moral sense'. The most innovative argument he offers for this claim is that our empathic reactions play a crucial role in fixing the reference of moral terms. I argue that Slote's bold proposal faces all the main problems of analytical naturalism, as well as some of its own. I suggest that empathy may nevertheless play a more modest and indirect role in acquiring moral knowledge.
  •  3194
    Sentimentalism comes in many varieties: explanatory sentimentalism, judgment sentimentalism, metaphysical sentimentalism, and epistemic sentimentalism. This encyclopedia entry gives an overview of the positions and main arguments pro and con.
  •  3138
    Meaningfulness and Time
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84 (2): 345-377. 2011.
    (Pdf updated to final, slightly revised version of November 2010) Almost everyone would prefer to lead a meaningful life. But what is meaning in life and what makes a life meaningful? I argue, first, for a new analysis of the concept of meaningfulness in terms of the appropriateness of feelings of fulfilment and admiration. Second, I argue that while the best current conceptions of meaningfulness, such as Susan Wolf’s view that in a meaningful life ‘subjective attraction meets objective attracti…Read more
  •  1569
    What's So Great about Experience?
    Res Philosophica 92 (2): 371-388. 2015.
    Suppose that our life choices result in unpredictable experiences, as L.A. Paul has recently argued. What does this mean for the possibility of rational prudential choice? Not as much as Paul thinks. First, what’s valuable about experience is its broadly hedonic quality, and empirical studies suggest we tend to significantly overestimate the impact of our choices in this respect. Second, contrary to what Paul suggests, the value of finding out what an outcome is like for us does not suffice to r…Read more
  •  1725
    This paper is an overview of contemporary theories of meaning in life and its relation to well-being.
  •  1681
    A Humean theory of moral intuition
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43 (3): 360-381. 2013.
    According to the quasi-perceptualist account of philosophical intuitions, they are intellectual appearances that are psychologically and epistemically analogous to perceptual appearances. Moral intuitions share the key characteristics of other intuitions, but can also have a distinctive phenomenology and motivational role. This paper develops the Humean claim that the shared and distinctive features of substantive moral intuitions are best explained by their being constituted by moral emotions. …Read more