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28Well-Being in Contemporary SocietySpringer. 2015.This anthology examines the practical role of well-being in contemporary society. It discusses developments such as globalization, consumerism and the rapid innovation and use of new and emerging technologies and focuses on the significant impact of these developments on the well-being of people living today. The anthology brings together researchers from various disciplines, including psychology, economics, sociology, philosophy and development studies. It provides concrete insight on the role …Read more
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12Interpersonal comparisons of well-being: Increasing convergencePolitics, Philosophy and Economics. forthcoming.The main question of this paper is how people may agree in their interpersonal comparisons of wellbeing. These comparisons are important in social ethics and for policy purposes. The paper firstly examines grounds for convergence in easy cases. Then comes a more difficult case of low convergence in order to explore a way to increase it. For this, concepts from the empirical subjective well-being literature are used: life satisfaction and vignettes. Ideas of John Harsanyi and Serge Kolm thereby r…Read more
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6Life Satisfaction and Affect: Why Do these SWB Measures Correlate Differently with Material Goods and Freedom?Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1-16. forthcoming.Two different types of subjective well-being (SWB) measures exhibit a remarkable difference in their correlations with people’s circumstances. The life satisfaction method shows relatively a strong correlation with income and material conveniences while affective measures are more tightly linked with freedom. Why is this so? To explain this difference I examine the cognitive mechanisms underlying these measures by means of dual process theory. This theory identifies two broad categories of cogni…Read more
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1Rol-interactie coördinatie is niets nieuws en coöperatie juist welAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 113 (3): 375-378. 2021.Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.
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67Moral ape philosophyBiology and Philosophy 26 (6): 891-904. 2011.Our closest relative the chimpanzee seems to display proto-moral behavior. Some scholars emphasize the similarities between humans and chimpanzees, others some key differences. This paper aims is to formulate a set of intermediate conditions between a sometimes helpful chimpanzee and moral man. I specify these intermediate conditions as requirements for the chimpanzees, and for each requirement I take on a verificationist stance and ask what the empirical conditions that satisfy it would be. I a…Read more
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23Preference, Value, Choice, and Welfare, Daniel M. Hausman. Cambridge University Press, 2012, xiv + 153 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 30 (1): 99-103. 2014.
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108A stag hunt with signalling and mutual beliefsBiology and Philosophy 28 (4): 559-576. 2013.The problem of cooperation for rational actors comprises two sub problems: the problem of the intentional object (under what description does each actor perceive the situation?) and the problem of common knowledge for finite minds (how much belief iteration is required?). I will argue that subdoxastic signalling can solve the problem of the intentional object as long as this is confined to a simple coordination problem. In a more complex environment like an assurance game signals may become unre…Read more
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356Social Preferences and Context SensitivityGames 8. 2017.This paper is a partial review of the literature on ‘social preferences'. There are empirical findings that convincingly demonstrate the existence of social preferences, but there are also studies that indicate their fragility. So how robust are social preferences, and how exactly are they context dependent? One of the most promising insights from the literature, in my view, is an equilibrium explanation of mutually referring conditional social preferences and expectations. I use this concept of…Read more
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70Scaling HappinessPhilosophical Psychology 27 (5): 703-718. 2014.This paper focuses on a particular method which is used in contemporary empirical happiness studies, namely measuring people’s happiness by scoring their emotions (Kahneman is a prominent scholar). I examine the presupposition in this field that emotion scores can be added or subtracted, that throughout affective space runs a straight axis that plots hedonic tone or pleasure.
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53A strawson–lewis defence of social preferencesEconomics and Philosophy 28 (3): 291-310. 2012.This paper examines a special kind of social preference, namely a preference to do one's part in a mixed-motive setting because the other party expects one to do so. I understand this expectation-based preference as a basic reactive attitude. Given this, and the fact that expectations in these circumstances are likely to be based on other people's preferences, I argue that in cooperation a special kind of equilibrium ensues, which I call a loop, with people's preferences and expectations mutuall…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Areas of Interest
Value Theory |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |