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1624What'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
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1804Meaningfulness (Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-Being)In Guy Fletcher (ed.), Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Well-Being, Routledge. 2015.This paper is an overview of contemporary theories of meaning in life and its relation to well-being.
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1722A Humean theory of moral intuitionCanadian 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
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1333The Social Dimension of AutonomyIn Danielle Petherbridge (ed.), The Critical Theory of Axel Honneth, Lexington Books. pp. 255-302. 2013.
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44Metz, Thaddeus. Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 269. $45.00 (review)Ethics 125 (2): 600-605. 2015.
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727Flourishing and FinitudeJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (2): 1-6. 2014.It would be terrible for us if humanity ceased to exist after we all die. But of course, eventually humanity will go out of existence. Does this result in a vicious regress if our flourishing hangs on what happens after us? Mark Johnston thinks so. In this note, I explain how Johnston's objection can be avoided. Briefly, our activities have a meaning horizon that extends for some generations after us. What matters is that we make a positive difference to the lives of those generations, not that …Read more
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3201Empathy, Emotion Regulation, and Moral JudgmentIn Heidi Maibom (ed.), Empathy and Morality, Oxford University Press. 2014.In this paper, my aim is to bring together contemporary psychological literature on emotion regulation and the classical sentimentalism of David Hume and Adam Smith to arrive at a plausible account of empathy's role in explaining patterns of moral judgment. Along the way, I criticize related arguments by Michael Slote, Jesse Prinz, and others
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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