• Tilburg University
    Department of Philosophy
    Graduate student
  • University of Helsinki
    Department of Philosophy (Theoretical Philosophy, Practical Philosophy, Philosophy in Swedish)
    Post-doctoral fellow
Tilburg University
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2013
Helsinki, Finland
  •  12
    Citation metrics are statistical measures of scientific output that draw on citation indexes. They purport to capture the impact of scientific articles and the journals in which they appear. As evaluative tools they are mostly used in the natural sciences, but they are also acquiring an important role in the humanities. While the strengths and weaknesses of citation metrics are extensively debated in a variety of fields, they have only recently started attracting attention in the philosophy of s…Read more
  •  194
    In this paper we argue that there is a kind of moral disagreement that survives the Rawlsian veil of ignorance. While a veil of ignorance eliminates sources of disagreement stemming from self-interest, it does not do anything to eliminate deeper sources of disagreement. These disagreements not only persist, but transform their structure once behind the veil of ignorance. We consider formal frameworks for exploring these differences in structure between interested and disinterested disagreement, …Read more
  •  16
    The soul of economics: editorial
    Journal of Economic Methodology 30 (2): 71-79. 2023.
    The Financial Crisis of 2007–2009 has been one of the worst economic crises since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In addition to directly impacting the economy, it had substantial ramifications...
  •  5
    Norms2: Norms About Norms
    Erkenntnis 88 (6): 2673-2694. 2023.
    In this paper, I outline and defend the view that variations in compliance levels with one and the same norm represent differentnorms about following norms. In support of this claim, I first argue that classic game-theoretic accounts, which define norms as Nash equilibria of noncooperative games, typically consider variations in compliance levels as separate norms. After that, I suggest a more fine-grained, game-theoretic distinction that accounts for degrees of compliance with the same norm and…Read more
  •  13
    The role of psychology in behavioral economics: The case of social preferences
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 72 11-21. 2018.
  •  44
    Multiple models, one explanation
    Journal of Economic Methodology 28 (2): 186-206. 2021.
    We develop an account of how mutually inconsistent models of the same target system can provide coherent information about the system. Our account makes use of ideas from the debate surrounding rob...
  •  32
    Knowledge transfer and its contexts
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 77 1-10. 2019.
    Knowledge transfer across different contexts has become an increasingly prevalent feature of current science. As such, it is a relevant topic also for history and philosophy of science. This special issue presents a set of papers that study knowledge transfer in various disciplines. The contributions approach the topic from either an integrated history and philosophy of science perspective, 2) a systematic philosophical perspective, or 3) a historical perspective. This overview article is organi…Read more
  •  9
    Reflections on the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize Awarded to Banerjee, Duflo, and Kremer
    Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 13 (1). 2020.
  •  21
    Citation metrics are statistical measures of scientific outputs that draw on citation indexes. They purport to capture the impact of scientific articles and the journals in which they appear. As evaluative tools, citation metrics are mostly used in the natural sciences, but they are also acquiring an important role in the humanities, thereby affecting the development of research programs and institutions. While the strengths and weaknesses of citation metrics are extensively debated in a variety…Read more
  •  7
    Measuring norms using social survey data
    with Juliette R. de Wit
    Economics and Philosophy 37 (2): 188-221. 2021.
    This paper proposes a novel measure of civic norm compliance. We combine the literature on norm compliance from institutional economics and social philosophy. Institutional economics draws on survey data to measure civic norms, whereas social philosophy offers a theoretical framework that proves fruitful when used to operationalize civic norms. This paper shows that significantly different results emerge when the operationalization of civic norms in institutional economics draws on the theoretic…Read more
  •  125
    On the Emergence of Descriptive Norms
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 13 (1): 3-22. 2014.
    A descriptive norm is a behavioral rule that individuals follow when their empirical expectations of others following the same rule are met. We aim to provide an account of the emergence of descriptive norms by first looking at a simple case, that of the standing ovation. We examine the structure of a standing ovation, and show it can be generalized to describe the emergence of a wide range of descriptive norms
  •  124
    Conformorality. A Study on Group Conditioning of Normative Judgment
    with Marie Postma-Nilsenová and Matteo Colombo
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology (4): 751-764. 2013.
    How does other people’s opinion affect judgments of norm transgressions? In our study, we used a modification of the famous Asch paradigm to examine conformity in the moral domain. The question we addressed was how peer group opinion alters normative judgments of scenarios involving violations of moral, social, and decency norms. The results indicate that even moral norms are subject to conformity, especially in situations with a high degree of social presence. Interestingly, the degree of confo…Read more
  •  83
    In this work, we present a mathematical model for the emergence of descriptive norms, where the individual decision problem is formalized with the standard Bayesian belief revision machinery. Previous work on the emergence of descriptive norms has relied on heuristic modeling. In this paper we show that with a Bayesian model we can provide a more general picture of the emergence of norms, which helps to motivate the assumptions made in heuristic models. In our model, the priors formalize the bel…Read more
  •  124
    Robustness analysis and tractability in modeling
    European Journal for Philosophy of Science 7 (1): 79-95. 2017.
    In the philosophy of science and epistemology literature, robustness analysis has become an umbrella term that refers to a variety of strategies. One of the main purposes of this paper is to argue that different strategies rely on different criteria for justifications. More specifically, I will claim that: i) robustness analysis differs from de-idealization even though the two concepts have often been conflated in the literature; ii) the comparison of different model frameworks requires differen…Read more
  •  37
    Robert Hudson’s book is a contribution to the recent debate on robustness analysis in scientific practice, with a specific focus on the empirical sciences. In this context, robustness analysis is defined as a way to increase the probability of a certain hypothesis by showing that the same result is obtained from several, alternative methods. The rationale underlying this practice is that it would be highly unlikely if different, independent means of observation provided the same wrong outcome.We…Read more