-
3Magnolia As Philosophy: Meaning and CoincidenceIn David Kyle Johnson (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Popular Culture as Philosophy, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 1193-1215. 2022.In Magnolia, a 1999 movie written and directed by then 29-year-old Paul Thomas Anderson, we follow a range of characters who all try to come to terms with the things happening to them in both the present and past. This chapter interprets the movie as making a philosophical point about meaning: how and why do people find meaning in and attribute meaning to things, even if they seem to happen for no apparent reason at all? We will analyze how both the movie’s characters and all of us watching the …Read more
-
37This chapter critically analyses the ethical and political dimensions of supposedly subtle and non-coercive interventions that aim to ‘prevent crime’ through environmental designs making certain public spaces less attractive for specific groups. Examples include benches designed to discourage sleeping (targeted at homeless people), high-pitched noises or classical music played to deter lingering (targeted at youngsters), and specific lighting to prevent aggression (targeted at nightlife). While …Read more
-
11Pushed for Being Better: On the Possibility and Desirability of Moral NudgingJournal of Value Inquiry 1-27. forthcoming.
-
7The Entire History of You and Knowing Too MuchIn William Irwin & David Kyle Johnson (eds.), Black Mirror and Philosophy, Wiley. 2020.This chapter goes into crucial questions related to the impact of technology on our privacy, our personal identity and our social relationships. While technology often seems extremely convenient in helping us remember things and share our experiences with others, this episode shows that it can have highly undesirable side‐effects as well. Technologies like the grain put inevitable pressures not only on privacy and trust but also on our ability to create and tell our life stories. In this chapter…Read more
-
73Nudging, Transparency, and WatchfulnessSocial Theory and Practice 45 (1): 43-73. 2019.Nudges have been criticized for working ‘in the dark’, influencing people without their full awareness. To assess whether this property renders nudging an illegitimate policy tool in liberal democracies, we argue that in scrutinizing nudge transparency, we should adequately divide our focus between nudging techniques, the nudgers employing them, and the nudgees subjected to them. We develop an account of what it means for nudgees to be ‘watchful’, a disposition that enables them to resist and ci…Read more
-
146The ethics of nudging: An overviewPhilosophy Compass 15 (4). 2020.So‐called nudge policies utilize insights from behavioral science to achieve policy outcomes. Nudge policies try to improve people's decisions by changing the ways options are presented to them, rather than changing the options themselves or incentivizing or coercing people. Nudging has been met with great enthusiasm but also fierce criticism. This paper provides an overview of the debate on the ethics of nudging to date. After outlining arguments in favor of nudging, we first discuss different …Read more
-
175Market nudges and autonomyEconomics and Philosophy (1): 138-165. 2022.Behavioural techniques or ‘nudges’ can be used for various purposes. In this paper, we shift the focus from government nudges to nudges used by for-profit market agents. We argue that potential worries about nudges circumventing the deliberative capacities or diminishing the control of targeted agents are greater when it comes to market nudges, given that these (1) are not constrained by the principles that regulate government nudges (mildness, sensitivity to people’s interests and public justif…Read more
-
1525The Politics of Envy: Outlaw Emotions in Capitalist SocietiesIn Sara Protasi (ed.), The Moral Psychology of Envy, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2022.
-
1Beyond markets and states: the importance of communitiesInternational Social Science Journal 2011 (202): 489-500. 2011.status: published.
-
5Why Liberals Can Favour Compulsory AttendancePOLITICS 3 (29): 218-222. 2009.It has been argued that compulsory voting conflicts with a number of liberal commitments, such as free thought, free speech and privacy. This article aims to show that compulsory voting, which is actually a misnomer for compulsory attendance, can in fact be defended on a liberal basis. If understood correctly, compulsory attendance laws and liberalism fit quite easily together.
-
13Thinking Things Through: The Value and Limitations of James Buchanan’s Public Choice TheoryReview of Political Economy 19 (2): 165-179. 2007.James Buchanan, one of the founders of Public Choice theory, applies the conceptual apparatus of economics to the public domain. This article investigates which assumptions are crucial to Buchanan’s project, concentrating on methodological individualism and the Homo Economicus model. It shows that Buchanan from time to time moves away from these economic concepts, though only in minor ways. The article also focuses on Buchanan’s normative emphasis on the role of institutions in coordinating self…Read more
-
12PhD Thesis Summary: Rationality and Institutions: An Inquiry into the Normative Implications of Rational Choice TheoryErasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 1 (1): 185-187. 2008.status: published.
-
6Book Review of 'Beyond Conventional Economics', edited by Giuseppe Eusepi and Alan HamlinReview of Social Economy 66 (3): 408-412. 2008.status: published.
-
13Against the Secret Ballot: Toward a New Proposal for Open VotingActa Politica 48 (4): 490-507. 2013.The secret ballot is considered a central feature of free and fair elections all over the world. While the reasons to uphold it seem to be overwhelming, we argue that the secret ballot is only second-best at best and that a modified version of open voting might prove to be more democratic. Instead of denying the various problems and difficulties that an open system might encounter, we want to offer a genuine proposal that can avoid these numerous pitfalls. After rehearsing the various arguments …Read more
-
11Talking money. How market-based valuation can undermine environmental protectionEcological Economics 1117. 2015.In this paper, we want to analyze conceptually whether and when merely using economic discourse – talking money – can crowd out people's positive attitudes towards environmental goods and their reasons to protect them. We concentrate on the specific case of market-based or monetary valuation as an instance of ‘commodification in discourse’ and argue that it can have the same moral problems as real commodification. We aim to bring together insights from philosophy, ethics, economics and psycholog…Read more
-
7The Sources of Cooperation: On Strong Reciprocity and its Theoretical ImplicationsTheory and Psychology 18 (4): 527-544. 2008.This article focuses on the explanations of human cooperation that dominate the fields of psychology, philosophy, economics and other social sciences. It argues that these accounts all frame cooperation in egoistic terms and thus cannot solve the evolutionary puzzle of strong reciprocity, defined as a propensity to cooperate with others similarly disposed and to punish others who violate norms, even at a personal cost and without any prospect of present or future rewards. This article shows that…Read more
-
66Why Compulsory Voting Can Enhance DemocracyActa Politica 42 (1): 23-39. 2007.Even though more than half of all citizens in the world are currently able to exercise the right to elect their leaders, many of them choose not to vote. This article considers the role of compulsory voting in order to enhance the democratic values of political participation and equality. Raising turnout considerably, it is an effective instrument to motivate citizens to express their voice in public life, thereby ensuring that their concerns will be heeded. Opponents of compulsory voting, howev…Read more
-
23Solving the Paradox: The Expressive Rationality of the Decision to VoteRationality and Society 18 (4): 419-441. 2006.The renowned paradox of voting arises when one tries to explain the decision to go out and vote in an exclusively instrumental framework. Instead of postulating that voters always derive utility from the act of voting, I want to search for the reasons that underlie the absence or presence of a preference for voting. In my noninstrumental account of expressive rationality, citizens want to express who they are and what they care about. Whether or not one votes therefore depends on the force of on…Read more
-
44status: published.
-
124Nudging and Autonomy: Analyzing and Alleviating the WorriesReview of Philosophy and Psychology 11 (1): 137-156. 2020.One of the most pervasive criticisms of nudges has been the claim that they violate, undermine or decrease people’s autonomy. This claim, however, is seldom backed up by an explicit and detailed conception of autonomy. In this paper, we aim to do three things. First, we want to clear up some conceptual confusion by distinguishing the different conceptions used by Cass Sunstein and his critics in order to get clear on how they conceive of autonomy. Second, we want to add to the existing discussio…Read more
-
11The Community of Advantage: A Behavioral Economist’s Defence of the Market, Robert Sugden. Oxford University Press, 2018, xxii + 320 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 35 (3): 581-586. 2019.
-
17The Ethics of Nudging and Beyond: Response to CommentariesAmerican Journal of Bioethics 19 (10). 2019.Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2019, Page W9-W13.
-
49Ethical Criteria for Health-Promoting Nudges: A Case-by-Case AnalysisAmerican Journal of Bioethics 19 (5): 48-59. 2019.Health-promoting nudges have been put into practice by different agents, in different contexts and with different aims. This article formulates a set of criteria that enables a thorough ethical evaluation of such nudges. As such, it bridges the gap between the abstract, theoretical debates among academics and the actual behavioral interventions being implemented in practice. The criteria are derived from arguments against nudges, which allegedly disrespect nudgees, as these would impose values o…Read more
-
57Effective Vote Markets and the Tyranny of WealthRes Publica 25 (1): 39-54. 2019.What limits should there be on the areas of life that are governed by market forces? For many years, no one seriously defended the buying and selling votes for political elections. In recent years, however, this situation has changed, with a number of authors defending the permissibility of vote markets. One popular objection to such markets is that they would lead to a tyranny of wealth, where the poor are politically dominated by the rich. In a recent paper, Taylor :313–328, 2017. doi: 10.1007…Read more
-
60The Sexual Ethics of HPV Vaccination for BoysHEC Forum 26 (1): 27-42. 2014.Human papillomavirus (HPV) is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections. It is a leading cause of cervical cancer in women but the virus is increasingly being linked to several other cancers in men and women alike. Since the introduction of safe and effective but also expensive vaccines, many developed countries have implemented selective vaccination programs for girls. Some however argue that these programs should be expanded to include boys, since (1) HPV constitutes non-negligibl…Read more
-
19Rationality, Norms and Institutions: In Search of a Realistic UtopiaHuman Affairs 17 (1): 33-41. 2007.Rationality, Norms and Institutions: In Search of a Realistic Utopia The main goal of political philosophers is to search for a realistic utopia by taking individuals as they are and institutions, rules and laws as they might be. Instead of trying to change either individuals or institutions in order to improve society, this article argues that both strategies should be combined, since there are causal connections running both ways. Because individuals ultimately devise and uphold institutions, …Read more
-
31Tolerance: A Virtue?Philosophy in the Contemporary World 15 (1): 44-54. 2008.This article focuses on the difficult issue of what exactly goes on when an individual tolerates something. It focuses on the problem of why an individual would ever choose to allow for some practice that he deerns unacceptable while having the power to do something about it. After distinguishing between different attitudes (tolerant as well as intolerant), this article argues that individuals can have various reasons for deciding to tolerate what they deern wrong. As such, we defend a broad con…Read more
-
The Ethics of Sex Selection for Non-Medical Reasons: A Defence of Common SenseEthical Perspectives 11 (1): 76-89. 2004.In the previous issue of Ethical Perspectives David Heyd defends the permissibility of sex selection for non-medical reasons. He tries to show that there is nothing inherently wrong with this practice and that allowing it does not lead to undesirable consequences. There are several difficulties with his analysis, but the main objection is that it ultimately relies on a crude form of utilitarianism. Along with some critical comments on his article, we provide ethical arguments in support of the i…Read more
-
14Nietzsche has often been interpreted as criticizing Buddhism for its pessimistic nihilism, since it supposedly aims at the otherworldly goal of nirvanaand the extinction of suffering. This article tries to adjust this view by focusing on the aspects of Buddhism of which Nietzsche implicitly or explicitly approves. It also relates these to some striking similarities between their views of the world, the individual, life in general and how to deal with it. This article shows that Nietzsche, in his…Read more