• 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
  •  1067
    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
  •  724
    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
  •  1032
    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
  •  686
    Flourishing and Finitude
    Journal 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
  •  3063
    Empathy, Emotion Regulation, and Moral Judgment
    In 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
  •  762
    The Narrative Calculus
    Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 5. 2015.
    This paper examines systematically which features of a life story (or history) make it good for the subject herself - not aesthetically or morally good, but prudentially good. The tentative narrative calculus presented claims that the prudential narrative value of an event is a function of the extent to which it contributes to her concurrent and non-concurrent goals, the value of those goals, and the degree to which success in reaching the goals is deserved in virtue of exercising agency. The na…Read more
  •  175
    Moral Internalism and the Brain
    Social Theory and Practice 34 (1): 1-24. 2008.
    In this article, the author discusses the methodology of the internalism debate and the role that neuroscience and related experimental methods can play in it. The author argues that findings in either actual or fictional experimental psychology or neuroscience have little relevance to the debate. He claims that the findings do not provide any independent support pro or con internalism. He also observes that the traditional view of the methodological autonomy of philosophical moral psychology re…Read more
  •  1864
    What 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.
  •  852
    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
  •  1688
    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.
  •  1119
    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
  •  2404
    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.
  •  1720
    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
  •  2184
    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.
  •  1972
    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
  •  561
    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