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7A dogma of speech act theoryInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 68 (6): 1429-1445. 2025.In this article I argue that the distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts needs examination, not just in its details but in its philosophical standing. We need to consider whether the distinction is motivated by (sometimes unwittingly) assumed problematic philosophical assumptions concerning the nature of our dependence on the words of others and the rationality of speech reception. Working with an example of the act of telling, I argue against the idea that the distinction is s…Read more
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14Decent Policing: Police Professionalism Beyond the Legalism-Autonomy-AxisHuman Studies 1-19. forthcoming.The status of the police as a profession in democratic societies is a contested issue. At stake is whether the police have an autonomous field of action related to a set of important values, or whether they are simply upholding and executing a set of given rules. In recent research, this issue has been framed in terms of two opposing sets of attitudes among police officers: legalism and autonomy. Even though their precise definitions vary the terms have recently, perhaps most prominently in Scan…Read more
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38Lever vi skeptisisme i forhold til andre?Agora Journal for metafysisk spekulasjon 26 (1-2): 66-83. 2008.
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43Must Expression Be Instrumental?Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 28 (2): 282-302. 2021.This article engages critically with the theory of expression proposed by Mitchell Green in his Self-Expression (2007). In this book, Green argues that expressions are signals designed to convey information about mental states. By putting pressure on one of the examples Green uses in his book, I will challenge this thesis. I will then deepen this challenge by developing a contrast between two philosophical perspectives on expression, which I name the 'instrumental' and the `descriptive'. I take …Read more
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87Spontaneous expression and intentional actionInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (10): 1841-1860. forthcoming.When spontaneous expressions such as smiling or crying have been at issue in Anglophone philosophy of action, the touchstone has been Donald Davidson’s belief-desire account of action. In this essay, I take a different approach. I use Elizabeth Anscombe’s formal conception of intentional action to capture the distinction and unity between intentional action and spontaneous expression. Anscombe’s strategy is to restrict her inquiry to the class of acts to which a certain sense of the question ‘Wh…Read more
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635Skill, Drill, and Intelligent Performance: Ryle and IntellectualismJournal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 5 (5). 2017.In this paper, we aim to show that a study of Gilbert Ryle’s work has much to contribute to the current debate between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism with respect to skill and know-how. According to Ryle, knowing how and skill are distinctive from and do not reduce to knowing that. What is often overlooked is that for Ryle this point is connected to the idea that the distinction between skill and mere habit is a category distinction, or a distinction in form. Criticizing the reading of…Read more
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95A Dilemma for Neo-Expressivism—And How to Resolve ItActa Analytica 31 (2): 191-205. 2016.In this paper, I present a dilemma for neo-expressivist accounts of self-consciousness. Such accounts are united by the idea that we can elucidate self-consciousness by appreciating the thought that some self-ascriptions both function as expressions and are truth-evaluable statements. The dilemma, I argue, is that the neo-expressivists either have to accept a circular element into their accounts or else the accounts lose their appeal. I recommend embracing circularity and argue that this is a ca…Read more
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151What is it to Depsychologize Psychology?European Journal of Philosophy 25 (2): 358-375. 2017.In this essay, I distinguish two ways of depsychologizing psychology: ‘anti-psychologism’ and ‘non-psychologism’. Both positions are responses to the Fregean sharp distinction between the logical and the psychological. But where anti-psychologism, which I find in John McDowell, attempts to overcome the sharp distinction by arguing that psychological states and their expressions are apt to be articulated into judgments, Stanley Cavell's non-psychologism, a powerful and neglected alternative, want…Read more
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78Expression and Self-ConsciousnessPhilosophical Topics 44 (1): 163-182. 2016.This article argues that nonverbal spontaneous expressions of mental states in human beings involve self-consciousness. We—language-using rational creatures—are capable of knowing our smiles, winces, and frustrated frowns in a self-conscious way. This distinguishes expressions from mere reflexes and mere physiological responses. Such a capacity is, further, essential to such forms of behavior. This is shown by the difficulty of constructing a coherent scenario where we—keeping our rational and c…Read more
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38Review of Inside Ethics: On the Demands of Moral Thought by Alice CraryNordic Wittgenstein Review 5 (1): 131-138. 2016.Book review of Crary, Alice, Inside Ethics: On the Demands of Moral Thought, Harvard University Press 2016.
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88Our Relation to Our Own Expressions: Comment on Bar‐On, Green, and FinkelsteinAnalytic Philosophy 54 (4): 466-476. 2013.
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908Seeing People and Knowing You: Perception, Shared Knowledge, and AcknowledgmentEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 5 (4): 55--73. 2013.This article takes up the proposal that action and expression enable perceptual knowledge of other minds, a proposal that runs counter to a tradition of thinking that other minds are special in that they are essentially unobservable. I argue that even if we accept this proposal regarding perceptual knowledge, there is still a difference between knowing another person and knowing other things. I articulate this difference by pointing out that I can know another person by sharing knowledge with he…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Social and Political Philosophy |