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92Regimenting ReasonsTheoria 61 (3): 203-214. 2005.The Belief‐Desire model (the B‐D model) of reasons for action has been subject to much criticism lately. Two of the most elaborate and trenchant expositions of such criticisms are found in recent works by Jonathan Dancy (2000) and Fred Stoutland (2002). In this paper we set out to respond to the central pieces of their criticisms. For this purpose it is essential to sort out and regiment different senses in which the term ‘reason’ may be used. It is necessary to go beyond common philosophical pr…Read more
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Neither/Nor - Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Erik Carlson on the Occasion of His Fiftieth Birthday (edited book)Uppsala Philosophical Studies. 2011.
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113Does non-cognitivism rest on a mistake?Utilitas 19 (2): 184-200. 2007.Philippa Foot has recently argued that non-cognitivism rests on a mistake. According to Foot, non-cognitivism cannot properly account for the role of reasons in moral thinking. Furthermore, Foot argues that moral judgements share a conceptual structure with the kind of evaluations that we make about plants and animals, which cannot be couched in non-cognitivist terms. In this article I argue that, in the form of expressivism, non-cognitivism is capable of accommodating most of what Foot says abo…Read more
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Lennart Nordenfelt, Sokrates i Uppsala. En bok om och av Thorild Dahlquist (review)Tidskrift För Politisk Filosofi 2018 (3). 2018.
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Clive Hamilton, Den trotsiga jorden. Människans öde i antropocen (review)Tidskrift För Politisk Filosofi 2019 (2). 2019.
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Klas Grinell, Eudaimonia: Om det goda livet i klimatomställningens tid (review)Filosofisk Tidskrift 2023 (2). 2023.
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Carl-Henrik Bråkenhielm & Lotta Knutsson Bråkenhielm, Livsmeningar. (review)Filosofisk Tidskrift. forthcoming.
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73Thaddeus Metz Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study. Oxford University Press, 2013. xi + 269 pp. isbn 978‐0‐19‐959931‐8 (review)Theoria 80 (4): 377-384. 2014.
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30Glen Pettigrove and Christine Swanton (eds.): Neglected Virtues: New York, NY: Routledge, 2022. Hardback (978-1-138-35158-5), £96. 274 pp (review)Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (3): 511-512. 2022.
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Sorting Out Reasons - On Stoutland’s Criticism of the Belief-Desire ModelIn Krister Segerberg & Rysiek Śliwiński (eds.), A Philosophical Smorgasbord: Essays on Action, Truth and Other Things in Honour of Fredrick Stoutland, Uppsala Philosophical Studies 52. 2003.
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64A Particular Consequentialism: Why Moral Particularism and Consequentialism Need Not ConflictUtilitas 15 (2): 194-205. 2003.Moral particularism is commonly presented as an alternative to ‘principle- or rule-based’ approaches to ethics, such as consequentialism or Kantianism. This paper argues that particularists' aversions to consequentialism stem not from a structural feature of consequentialismper se, but from substantial and structural axiological views traditionally associated with consequentialism. Given a particular approach to (intrinsic) value, there need be no conflict between moral particularism and consequ…Read more
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7Regimenting ReasonsTheoria 71 (3): 203-214. 2005.The Belief‐Desire model (the B‐D model) of reasons for action has been subject to much criticism lately. Two of the most elaborate and trenchant expositions of such criticisms are found in recent works by Jonathan Dancy (2000) and Fred Stoutland (2002). In this paper we set out to respond to the central pieces of their criticisms. For this purpose it is essential to sort out and regiment different senses in which the term ‘reason’ may be used. It is necessary to go beyond common philosophical pr…Read more
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123Virtue Ethics and ElitismPhilosophical Papers 37 (1): 131-155. 2008.Because of its reliance on a basically Aristotelian conception of virtue, contemporary virtue ethics is often criticised for being inherently elitist. I argue that this objection is mistaken. The core of my argument is that we need to take seriously that virtue, according to Aristotle, is something that we acquire gradually, via a developmental process. People are not just stuck with their characters once and for all, but can always aspire to become better (more virtuous). And that is plausibly …Read more
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153Virtue Ethics and the Search for an Account of Right ActionEthical Theory and Moral Practice 13 (3): 255-271. 2010.Conceived of as a contender to other theories in substantive ethics, virtue ethics is often associated with, in essence, the following account or criterion of right action: VR: An action A is right for S in circumstances C if and only if a fully virtuous agent would characteristically do A in C. There are serious objections to VR, which take the form of counter-examples. They present us with different scenarios in which less than fully virtuous persons would be acting rightly in doing what no fu…Read more
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81The role of virtue in Descartes' ethical theory, or: Was Descartes a virtue ethicist?History of Philosophy Quarterly 27. 2010.
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Does Eudaimonism Rest on a Mistake?In Sliwinski Rysiek & Svensson Frans (eds.), Neither/Nor - Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Erik Carlson on the Occasion of His Fiftieth Birthday, Uppsala Philosophical Studies. 2011.
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158Happiness, Well-being, and Their Relation to Virtue in Descartes' EthicsTheoria 77 (3): 238-260. 2011.My main thesis in this article is that Descartes' ethics should be understood as involving a distinction between happiness and well-being. The distinction I have in mind is never clearly stated or articulated by Descartes himself, but I argue that we nevertheless have good reason to embrace it as an important component in a charitable reconstruction of his ethical thought. In section I, I present Descartes' account of happiness and of how he thinks happiness can (and cannot) be acquired. Then, i…Read more
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256Eudaimonist Virtue Ethics and Right Action: A ReassessmentThe Journal of Ethics 15 (4): 321-339. 2011.My question in this paper concerns what eudaimonist virtue ethics (EVE) might have to say about what makes right actions right. This is obviously an important question if we want to know what (if anything) distinguishes EVE from various forms of consequentialism and deontology in ethical theorizing. The answer most commonly given is that according to EVE, an action is right if and only if it is what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances. However, understood as a claim about what makes …Read more
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100Non-Eudaimonism, The Sufficiency of Virtue for Happiness, and Two Senses of the Highest Good in Descartes's EthicsBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 23 (2): 277-296. 2015.In his reflections on ethics, Descartes distances himself from the eudaimonistic tradition in moral philosophy by introducing a distinction between happiness and the highest good. While happiness, in Descartes’s view, consists in an inner state of complete harmony and satisfaction, the highest good instead consists in virtue, i.e. in ‘a firm and constant resolution' to always use our free will well or correctly. In Section 1 of this paper, I pursue the Cartesian distinction between happiness and…Read more
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A Subjectivist Account of Life’s MeaningDe Ethica 4 (3). 2017.In this paper, I propose and defend a particular desire-based theory of what makes a person’s life meaningful. Desire-based theories avoid the problems facing other theories of meaning in life: in contrast to objectivist theories (both consequentialist and non-consequentialist ones), they succeed in providing a necessary link between what makes a person’s life meaningful and the person’s own set of attitudes or concerns; in contrast to hybrid theories (or subjectivist theories with a value requi…Read more
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11Objections to Virtue EthicsIn Nancy E. Snow (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Virtue, Oxford University Press. 2017.
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Mill and the Meaning of LifeIn Stephen D. Leach & James Tartaglia (eds.), The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers, Routledge. 2018.
Uppsala University
PhD, 2006
Gothenburg, Sweden
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
History of Western Philosophy |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |