•  926
    If you have ever had to move house, you will know this: the worst part is the sofa. You cannot do it alone. Nor will it be enough for me to just lift one end waiting for you to lift the other. We will have to work together to get the job done. If spaces are tight, we will even have to find a practical solution to a tantalizing mathematical puzzle: the moving sofa problem.Joint actions like that are part and parcel of everyday life. But what exactly is special about acting together? After all, th…Read more
  •  845
    Are Individualist Accounts of Collective Responsibility Morally Deficient?
    In A. Konzelmann Ziv & H. B. Schmid (eds.), Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents, Springer. pp. 329-342. 2013.
    Individualists hold that moral responsibility can be ascribed to single human beings only. An important collectivist objection is that individualism is morally deficient because it leaves a normative residue. Without attributing responsibility to collectives there remains a “deficit in the accounting books” (Pettit). This collectivist strategy often uses judgment aggregation paradoxes to show that the collective can be responsible when no individual is. I argue that we do not need collectivism t…Read more
  •  571
    Verantwortung und Sanktion
    In Buddeberg Eva & Vesper Achim (eds.), Moral und Sanktion, Campus. 2013.
    The paper offers a critique of sanctionism. According to this view, moral obligations are generated by the fear of sanctions. I argue that this view cannot capture the nature of important moral concepts and practices. I discuss in detail the practice of attributing moral responsibility to show this.
  •  548
    Why Change the Subject? On Collective Epistemic Agency
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6 (4): 843-864. 2015.
    This paper argues that group attitudes can be assessed in terms of standards of rationality and that group-level rationality need not be due to individual-level rationality. But it also argues that groups cannot be collective epistemic agents and are not collectively responsible for collective irrationality. I show that we do not need the concept of collective epistemic agency to explain how group-level irrationality can arise. Group-level irrationality arises because even rational individuals c…Read more
  •  533
    Sentimentalism and Moral Dilemmas
    Dialectica 69 (1): 1-22. 2015.
    It is sometimes said that certain hard moral choices constitute tragic moral dilemmas in which no available course of action is justifiable, and so the agent is blameworthy whatever she chooses. This paper criticizes a certain approach to the debate about moral dilemmas and considers the metaethical implications of the criticisms. The approach in question has been taken by many advocates as well as opponents of moral dilemmas who believe that analysing the emotional response of the agent is the …Read more
  •  366
    Constitutionalism and Value Theory
    In Andras Sajo & Renata Uitz (eds.), Constitutional Topography: Values and Constitutions, Eleven International Publishing. 2010.
    The theory and practice of constitutionalism is tightly interwoven with references and appeals to values. However, these references and appeals frequently remain undertheorized and are seldom connected directly to philosophical theories of value. This chapter outlines some ways in which such connections might be established.
  •  265
    Exploitation and Remedial Duties
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 38 (1): 55-72. 2019.
    The concept of exploitation and potentially exploitative real-world practices are the subject of increasing philosophical attention. However, while philosophers have extensively debated what exploitation is and what makes it wrong, they have said surprisingly little about what might be required to remediate it. By asking how the consequences of exploitation should be addressed, this article seeks to contribute to filling this gap. We raise two questions. First, what are the victims of exploitati…Read more
  •  243
    Exploitation and Joint Action
    Journal of Social Philosophy 50 (3): 280-300. 2019.
    Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.
  •  99
    Revisiting Strawsonian Arguments from Inescapability
    Philosophica 85 (2): 91-121. 2012.
    Peter Strawson defends the thesis that determinism is irrelevant to the justifiability of responsibility-attributions. In this paper, I want to examine various arguments advanced by Strawson in support of this thesis. These arguments all draw on the thought that the practice of responsibility is inescapable. My main focus is not so much the metaphysical details of Strawsonian compatibilism, but rather the more fundamental idea that x being inescapable may be reason for us to regard x as justifie…Read more
  •  75
    No Need to Get Emotional? Emotions and Heuristics
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (4): 845-862. 2013.
    Many believe that values are crucially dependent on emotions. This paper focuses on epistemic aspects of the putative link between emotions and value by asking two related questions. First, how exactly are emotions supposed to latch onto or track values? And second, how well suited are emotions to detecting or learning about values? To answer the first question, the paper develops the heuristics-model of emotions. This approach models emotions as sui generis heuristics of value. The empirical pl…Read more
  •  72
    Focusing Forgiveness
    Journal of Value Inquiry 48 (2): 217-234. 2014.
    IntroductionIt is clear that forgiveness is closely related to emotions. Bishop Butler’s “forswearing of resentment” is still the definition most philosophical works on the subject take as their point of departure. Some others disagree but usually only insofar as they focus on another reactive emotion – e.g., moral hatred, disappointment, anger – which we overcome when we forgive.More specifically, according to Roberts the emotion we overcome in forgiveness is anger, see Robert C. Roberts, “Forg…Read more
  •  71
    Special issue of EuJAP: Free Will and Epistemology
    with Robert Lockie, László Bernáth, and Timothy O’Connor
    European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 15 (2): 5-12. 2019.
    Preface to the Special Issue on Free Will and Epistemology written by Robert Lockie
  •  51
    In the current paper, we present and discuss a series of experiments in which we investigated people’s willingness to ascribe intentions, as well as blame and praise, to groups. The experiments draw upon the so-called “Knobe Effect”. Knobe [2003. “Intentional action and side effects in ordinary language.” Analysis 63: 190–194] found that the positiveness or negativeness of side-effects of actions influences people’s assessment of whether those side-effects were brought about intentionally, and a…Read more
  •  48
    Freedom: A global theory?
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 5 (13): 157-176. 2005.
    This essay provides a critical discussion of Philip Pettit’s book A Theory of Freedom: From the Psychology to the Politics of Agency (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). It evaluates the general prospeets of a ‘global theory of freedom’ of the kind advocated by Pettit, i.e. one that seeks explicitly to link a metaphysical theory of free agency to a distinct conception of political liberty. Pettit’s in many ways innovative views concerning ongoing debates in metaphysics and political theory (…Read more
  •  33
    Morality and Agency: Themes From Bernard Williams (edited book)
    Oxford University Press, Usa. 2022.
    Bernard Williams was one of the great philosophical figures of the second half of the 20th century and remains deeply influential. This edited volume brings together new articles from prominent scholars that focus on the innovative ideas and methods that Williams developed as part of his distinctive "outlook" in ethics. The chapters in the first section examine Williams's attempts to explore theoretical options beyond the confines of what he called the "morality system." The contributors show ho…Read more
  •  28
  •  25
    Emotions as indeterminate justifiers
    Synthese 199 (5-6): 1-23. 2021.
    Sentimentalists believe that values are crucially dependent on emotions. Epistemic sentimentalists subscribe to what I call the final-court-of-appeal view: emotional experience is ultimately necessary and can be sufficient for the justification of evaluative beliefs. This paper rejects this view defending a moderate version of rationalism that steers clear of the excesses of both “Stoic” rationalism and epistemic sentimentalism. We should grant that emotions play a significant epistemic role in …Read more
  •  23
    Using Quotas as a Remedy for Structural Injustice
    with György Barabás
    Erkenntnis 88 (8): 1-19. 2022.
    We analyze a frequent but undertheorized form of structural injustice, one that arises due to the difficulty of reaching numerically equitable representation of underrepresented subgroups within a larger group. This form of structural injustice is significant because it could occur even if it were possible to completely eliminate bias and overt discrimination from hiring and recruitment practices. The conceptual toolkit we develop can be used to analyze such situations and propose remedies. Spec…Read more
  •  16
    Verantwortung und Sanktion
    with Buddeberg Eva and Vesper Achim
    In Buddeberg Eva & Vesper Achim (eds.), Moral Und Sanktion, Campus. 2013.
  •  16
    The heuristics theory of emotions and moderate rationalism
    Philosophical Psychology. forthcoming.
    This paper argues that emotions can play an epistemic role as justifiers of evaluative beliefs. It also presents the heuristics theory of emotion as an empirically informed explanation of how emotions can play such a role and why they in practice usefully complement non-affective evaluative judgments. As such, the heuristics theory represents a form of moderate rationalism: it acknowledges that emotions can be epistemically valuable, even privileged in some sense, but denies that they would be u…Read more
  •  13
    Preface to Issue 24/2, May 2021
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (2): 427-429. 2021.
  •  13
    Using Quotas as a Remedy for Structural Injustice
    with György Barabás
    Erkenntnis 88 (8): 3631-3649. 2022.
    We analyze a frequent but undertheorized form of structural injustice, one that arises due to the difficulty of reaching numerically equitable representation of underrepresented subgroups within a larger group. This form of structural injustice is significant because it could occur even if it were possible to completely eliminate bias and overt discrimination from hiring and recruitment practices. The conceptual toolkit we develop can be used to analyze such situations and propose remedies. Spec…Read more
  •  11
    Editorial 5/2018
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (5): 1029-1031. 2018.
  •  8
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice: Preface to Issue 26/2, May 2023
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 26 (2): 167-168. 2023.
  •  1
    Agency, Fate and Luck: Themes from Bernard Williams (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2022.