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17The Intrinsic Value of Non-Basic States of AffairsIn Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen & Michael J. Zimmerman (eds.), Recent work on intrinsic value, Springer. pp. 361--370. 2005.
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5Fischer on the Time of Death’s BadnessPhilosophia 52 (2): 435-444. 2024.In a recent article in this journal, John Martin Fischer defends the view that death harms its victim after she dies. More specifically, he develops a “truthmaking” account in order to solve what he calls the Problem of Predication for this view. In this reply, we argue that Fischer’s proposed solution to this problem is unsuccessful.
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23Pitcovski’s explanation-based account of harmPhilosophical Studies 181 (2): 535-545. 2024.In a recent article in this journal, Eli Pitcovski puts forward a novel, explanation-based account of harm. We seek to show that Pitcovski’s account, and his arguments in favor of it, can be substantially improved. However, we also argue that, even thus improved, the account faces a dilemma. The dilemma concerns the question of what it takes for an event, E, to explain why a state, P, does not obtain. Does this require that P would have obtained if E had not occurred? Pitcovski’s theory faces pr…Read more
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11Omnium-gatherum: philosophical essays dedicated to Jan Österberg on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday (edited book)Dept. of Philosophy, Uppsala University. 2001.
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47Prudential Problems for the Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harm and BenefitPhilosophical Quarterly 74 (2): 474-481. 2023.In this paper, we put forward two novel arguments against the counterfactual comparative account (CCA) of harm and benefit. In both arguments, the central theme is that CCA conflicts with plausible judgements about benefit and prudence.
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44Dynamic Inconsistency and Performable PlansPhilosophical Studies 113 (2). 2003.An agent may abandon an initiated action plan, although he doesnot acquire new information or encounter unforeseen obstacles.Such dynamic inconsistency can be to the agent'';s guaranteeddisadvantage, and there is a debate on how it should rationallybe avoided. The main contenders are the sophisticated andthe resolute approaches. I argue that this debate is misconceived,since both approaches rely on false assumptions about theperformability of action plans. The debate can be reformulated,so as to…Read more
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60Deliberation, Foreknowledge, and Morality as a Guide to ActionErkenntnis 57 (1): 71-89. 2002.In Section 1, I rehearse some arguments for the claim that morality should be ``action-guiding'', and try to state the conditions under which a moral theory is in fact action-guiding. I conclude that only agents who are cognitively and conatively ``ideal'' are in general able to use a moral theory as a guide to action. In Sections 2 and 3, I discuss whether moral ``actualism'' implies that morality cannot be action-guiding even for ideal agents. If actualism is true, an ideal agent will know abo…Read more
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Causal determinism and human freedom are incompatible: A new argument for incompatibilism (vol 14, pg 167, 2000)Philosophia 32 (1-4): 443-448. 2005.
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137Mere Addition and Two Trilemmas of Population EthicsEconomics and Philosophy 14 (2): 283. 1998.A principal aim of the branch of ethics called ‘population theory’ or ‘population ethics’ is to find a plausible welfarist axiology, capable of comparing total outcomes with respect to value. This has proved an exceedingly difficult task. In this paper I shall state and discuss two ‘trilemmas’, or choices between three unappealing alternatives, which the population ethicist must face. The first trilemma is not new. It originates with Derek Parfit's well-known ‘Mere Addition Paradox’, and was fir…Read more
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134Consequentialism, Distribution and DesertUtilitas 9 (3): 307. 1997.This paper criticizes the consequentialist theory recently put forward by Fred Feldman. I argue that this theory violates two crucial requirements. Another theory, proposed by Peter Vallentyne, is similarly flawed. Feldman's basic ideas could, however, be developed into a more plausible theory. I suggest one possible way of doing this
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67Van Inwagen on determinism and moral responsibilityJournal of Value Inquiry 32 (2): 219-226. 1998.
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75Well-Being Counterfactualist Accounts of Harm and BenefitAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 99 (1): 164-174. 2021.ABSTRACT Suppose that, for every possible event and person who would exist whether or not the event were to occur, there is a well-being level that the person would occupy if the event were to occur, and a well-being level that the person would occupy if the event were not to occur. Do facts about such connections between events and well-being levels always suffice to determine whether an event would harm or benefit a person? Many seemingly attractive accounts of harm and benefit entail an affir…Read more
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241Vagueness, Incomparability, and the Collapsing PrincipleEthical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (3): 449-463. 2013.John Broome has argued that incomparability and vagueness cannot coexist in a given betterness order. His argument essentially hinges on an assumption he calls the ‘collapsing principle’. In an earlier article I criticized this principle, but Broome has recently expressed doubts about the cogency of my criticism. Moreover, Cristian Constantinescu has defended Broome’s view from my objection. In this paper, I present further arguments against the collapsing principle, and try to show that Constan…Read more
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72Well-Being without Being? A Reply to FeitUtilitas 30 (2): 198-208. 2018.In a recent Utilitas article, Neil Feit argues that every person occupies a well-being level of zero at all times and possible worlds at which she fails to exist. Views like his face the problem of the subject': how can someone have a well-being level in a scenario where she lacks intrinsic properties? Feit argues that this problem can be solved by noting, among other things, that a proposition about a person can be true at a possible world in which neither she nor the proposition exists. In thi…Read more
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15Value TheoryIn Sven Ove Hansson & Vincent F. Hendricks (eds.), Introduction to Formal Philosophy, Springer. pp. 523-534. 2012.This chapter deals with an area of study sometimes called “formal value theory” or “formal axiology”. Roughly characterized, this area investigates the structural and logical properties of value properties and value relations, such as goodness, badness, and betterness. There is a long-standing controversy about whether goodness and badness can, in principle, be measured on a cardinal scale, in a way similar to the measurement of well-understood quantitative concepts like length. Sect. 28.1 inves…Read more
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51The Significance of Tiny Contributions : Barnett and BeyondUtilitas. forthcoming.In a discussion of Parfit's Drops of Water case, Zach Barnett has recently proposed a novel argument against “No Small Improvement”; that is, the claim that a single drop of water cannot affect the magnitude of a thirsty person's suffering. We first show that Barnett's argument can be significantly strengthened, and also that the fundamental idea behind it yields a straightforward argument for the transitivity of equal suffering. We then suggest that defenders of No Small Improvement could rejec…Read more
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122The presumption of nothingnessRatio 14 (3). 2001.Several distinguished philosophers have argued that since the state of affairs where nothing exists is the simplest and least arbitrary of all cosmological possibilities, we have reason to be surprised that there is in fact a non-empty universe. We review this traditional argument, and defend it against two recent criticisms put forward by Peter van Inwagen and Derek Parfit. Finally, we argue that the traditional argument nevertheless needs reformulation, and that the cogency of the reformulated…Read more
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49Unruh's hybrid account of harmTheoria 89 (5): 748-754. 2023.Charlotte Unruh has recently put forward a hybrid account of what it is to suffer harm – one that combines comparative and non‐comparative elements. We raise two problems for Unruh's account. The first concerns killing and death; the second concerns the causing of temporarily low or high welfare.
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213The Oughts and Cans of Objective ConsequentialismUtilitas 11 (1): 91-96. 1999.Frances Howard -Snyder has argued that objective consequentialism violates the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. In most situations, she claims, we cannot produce the best consequences available, although objective consequentialism says that we ought to do so. Here I try to show that Howard -Snyder's argument is unsound. The claim that we typically cannot produce the best consequences available is doubtful. And even if there is a sense of ‘producing the best consequences’ in which we cannot …Read more
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71The small-improvement argument rescuedPhilosophical Quarterly 61 (242): 171-174. 2011.Gustafsson and Espinoza have recently argued that the ‘small-improvement argument’, against completeness as a rationality requirement for preference orderings, is defective. They claim that the two main premises of the argument conflict, and hence should not both be accepted. I show that this conflict can be avoided by modifying one of the premises
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36Review of Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2002 (1). 2002.
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282Plural harm: plural problemsPhilosophical Studies 180 (2): 553-565. 2023.The counterfactual comparative account of harm faces problems in cases that involve overdetermination and preemption. An influential strategy for dealing with these problems, drawing on a suggestion made by Derek Parfit, is to appeal to _plural harm_—several events _together_ harming someone. We argue that the most well-known version of this strategy, due to Neil Feit, as well as Magnus Jedenheim Edling’s more recent version, is fatally flawed. We also present some general reasons for doubting t…Read more
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38Reply to Klocksiem on the Counterfactual Comparative Account of HarmEthical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (2): 407-413. 2020.In a recent article in this journal, I claimed that the widely held counterfactual comparative account of harm violates two very plausible principles about harm and prudential reasons. Justin Klocksiem argues, in a reply, that CCA is in fact compatible with these principles. In this rejoinder, I shall try to show that Klocksiem’s defense of CCA fails.
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224Parity demystifiedTheoria 76 (2): 119-128. 2010.Ruth Chang has defended a concept of "parity", implying that two items may be evaluatively comparable even though neither item is better than or equally good as the other. This article takes no stand on whether there actually are cases of parity. Its aim is only to make the hitherto somewhat obscure notion of parity more precise, by defining it in terms of the standard value relations. Given certain plausible assumptions, the suggested definiens is shown to state a necessary and sufficient condi…Read more
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31Review of Randolph Clarke, Libertarian Accounts of Free Will (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2004 (10). 2004.