Jesper Johansson
Biographic Data
| ID | 354516 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jesper Johansson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jesper |
| FAMILY NAME | Johansson |
| SIGNATURE | JOHANSSON J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Uppsala University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2484-4502 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Higher-Order Control: An Argument for Moral Luck
In this paper, we give a new argument for the existence of moral luck. The argument is based on a manipulation case in which two agents both lack second-order control over their actions, but one of them has first-order control. Our argument is, we argue, in several respects stronger than standard arguments for moral luck. Five possible objections to the argument are considered, and its general significance for the debate on moral luck is briefly …
The Worse than Nothing Account of Harm: A Fallen Hero
Daniel Immerman has recently put forward a novel account of harm, the Worse than Nothing Account . We argue that this account faces fatal problems in cases in which an agent performs several simultaneous actions. We also argue that our criticism is considerably more powerful than another one that has recently been advanced
Pitcovski’s explanation-based account of harm
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 …
Benefits are Better than Harms: A Reply to Feit
We have argued that the counterfactual comparative account of harm and benefit (CCA) violates the plausible adequacy condition that an act that would harm an agent cannot leave her much better off than an alternative act that would benefit her. In a recent paper in this journal, however, Neil Feit objects that our argument presupposes questionable counterfactual backtracking. He also argues that CCA proponents can justifiably reject the condition…
Prudential Problems for the Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harm and Benefit
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
A Simple Analysis of Harm
In this paper, we present and defend an analysis of harm that we call the Negative Influence on Well-Being Account (NIWA). We argue that NIWA has a number of significant advantages compared to its two main rivals, the Counterfactual Comparative Account (CCA) and the Causal Account (CA), and that it also helps explain why those views go wrong. In addition, we defend NIWA against a class of likely objections, and consider its implications for sever…
Plural harm: Plural problems
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 a…
Unruh's hybrid account of harm
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
Doing Harm: A Reply to Klocksiem
In a recent article in this journal, Justin Klocksiem proposes a novel response to the widely discussed failure to benefit problem for the counterfactual comparative account of harm (CCA). According to Klocksiem, proponents of CCA can deal with this problem by distinguishing between facts about there being harm and facts about an agent's having done harm. In this reply, we raise three sets of problems for Klocksiem's approach
Causal Accounts of Harming
A popular view of harming is the causal account (CA), on which harming is causing harm . CA has several attractive features. In particular, it appears well equipped to deal with the most important problems for its main competitor, the counterfactual comparative account (CCA). However, we argue that, despite its advantages, CA is ultimately an unacceptable theory of harming. Indeed, while CA avoids several counterexamples to CCA, it is vulnerable …
Migrant Life Stories as Digital Heritage
Following the ambitions of international and national policy makers to digitalize the cultural heritage sector, a growing research field that deals with digitalization and cultural heritage has emerged. However, it has been argued that too much focus has been placed on technology and information policy issues and that research on how to achieve administrative effectiveness and preservation has taken precedence over studies of different actors' en…
Well-Being Counterfactualist Accounts of Harm and Benefit
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 acc…
Does Abortion Harm the Fetus
A central claim in abortion ethics is what might be called the Harm Claim – the claim that abortion harms the fetus. In this article, we put forward a simple and straightforward reason to reject the Harm Claim. Rather than invoking controversial assumptions about personal identity, or some nonstandard account of harm, as many other critics of the Harm Claim have done, we suggest that the aborted fetus cannot be harmed for the simple reason that i…
The Significance of Tiny Contributions: Barnett and Beyond
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 (a much stronger …
Bontly on Harm and the Non-Identity Problem
The ‘non-identity problem’ raises a well-known challenge to the person-affecting view, according to which an action can be wrong only if it affects someone for the worse. In a recent article, however, Thomas D. Bontly proposes a novel way to solve the non-identity problem in person-affecting terms. Bontly's argument is based on a contrastive causal account of harm. In this response, we argue that Bontly's argument fails even assuming that the con…
A Worthy Reception? Ambivalences in Social Work With Refugees and Migrants in Sweden
The purpose of this article is to analyze how reception practices and the meaning of a 'worthy' reception of refugees and migrants are negotiated in encounters between various receiving actors in times of shifting Swedish migration policies. The analysis is grounded in ethnographic methodology and draws on data collected in 2016. The aim of the study was to document experiences of the so-called 'refugee crisis' in Europe and Scandinavia from a bo…
Well-Being without Being? A Reply to Feit
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 w…
Preferenser och intressen hos Svenskt Näringsliv och Landsorganisationen om arbetskraftsinvandring under 2000-talets inledning
Preferences and interests of SN and LO about labour migration in the early 2000sThe article uses a political economy approach to analyze the preferences of the social partners SN and LO and to identify the coincided and disparate interests which the two organizations tried to defend in relation to labour migration in the debate prior to the Swedish labour migration policy reform in 2008. In contrast to presumptions by Varieties of Capitalism (VoC…
Dead and Gone? Reply to Jenkins
In a recent article, Joyce L. Jenkins challenges the common belief that desire satisfactionists are committed to the view that a person's welfare can be affected by posthumous events. Jenkins argues that desire satisfactionists can and should say that posthumous events only play an epistemic role: though such events cannot harm me, they can reveal that I have already been harmed by something else. In this response, however, we show that Jenkins's…
The Timing Problem
This chapter, which examines the argument of Epicurus about the timing problem of death, clarifies the Epicurean challenge and identifies some merits and disadvantages of the various anti-Epicurean views. It also explains the concept of several relevant principles including atemporalism, subsequentism, priorism, concurrentism, and eternalism, arguing that the Epicurean argument and its premises are valid.
Swedish Employers and Trade Unions, Varieties of Capitalism and Labour Migration Policies
This article explores the extent to which the varieties of capitalism (VoC) approach can inform our understanding of the role of organised interests in the process of labour migration policy reform in Sweden during the 2000s. VoC scholars maintain that policymakers prefer reforms conforming to the national political economy. Employers are also thought to support policies incentivecompatible with the prevailing model of capitalism. The analysis pr…
Being and Betterness
In this article I discuss the question of whether a person's existence can be better (or worse) for him than his non-existence. Recently, Nils Holtug and Melinda A. Roberts have defended an affirmative answer. These defenses, I shall argue, do not succeed. In different ways, Holtug and Roberts have got the metaphysics and axiology wrong. However, I also argue that a person's existence can after all be better (or worse) for him than his non-existe…
Fitting Attitudes, Welfare, and Time
Am I a Series
Scott Campbell has recently defended the psychological approach to personal identity over time by arguing that a person is literally a series of mental events. Rejecting four‐dimensionalism about the persistence of physical objects, Campbell regards constitutionalism as the main rival version of the psychological approach. He argues that his “series view” has two clear advantages over constitutionalism: it avoids the “two thinkers” objection and …
The Metaphysics of Everyday Life: An Essay in Practical Realism - Lynne Rudder Baker
In this book Lynne Baker elaborates, modifies and defends some of the main ideas of her celebrated book on personal identity, Persons and Bodies (Cambridge UP, 2000). Her overall aim this time, however, is to establish ‘a metaphysical view that respects the irreducible variety of things and properties in the world’ (p. 21). Unsurprisingly, she maintains that we need her ‘constitution view’ to accomplish this task. As always, her discussions are t…
Being and Betterness
In this article I discuss the question of whether a person's existence can be better (or worse) for him than his non-existence. Recently, Nils Holtug and Melinda A. Roberts have defended an affirmative answer. These defenses, I shall argue, do not succeed. In different ways, Holtug and Roberts have got the metaphysics and axiology wrong. However, I also argue that a person's existence can after all be better (or worse) for him than his non-existe…
A Worthy Reception? Ambivalences in Social Work With Refugees and Migrants in Sweden
The purpose of this article is to analyze how reception practices and the meaning of a 'worthy' reception of refugees and migrants are negotiated in encounters between various receiving actors in times of shifting Swedish migration policies. The analysis is grounded in ethnographic methodology and draws on data collected in 2016. The aim of the study was to document experiences of the so-called 'refugee crisis' in Europe and Scandinavia from a bo…
Prudential Problems for the Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harm and Benefit
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
The Significance of Tiny Contributions: Barnett and Beyond
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 (a much stronger …
Swedish Employers and Trade Unions, Varieties of Capitalism and Labour Migration Policies
This article explores the extent to which the varieties of capitalism (VoC) approach can inform our understanding of the role of organised interests in the process of labour migration policy reform in Sweden during the 2000s. VoC scholars maintain that policymakers prefer reforms conforming to the national political economy. Employers are also thought to support policies incentivecompatible with the prevailing model of capitalism. The analysis pr…
Kaufman's Response to Lucretius
The symmetry argument is an objection to the ‘deprivation approach’– the account of badness favored by nearly all philosophers who take death to be bad for the one who dies. Frederik Kaufman's recent response to the symmetry argument is a development of Thomas Nagel's suggestion that we could not have come into existence substantially earlier than we in fact did. In this paper, I aim to show that Kaufman's suggestion fails. I also consider severa…
Fitting Attitudes, Welfare, and Time
Am I a Series
Scott Campbell has recently defended the psychological approach to personal identity over time by arguing that a person is literally a series of mental events. Rejecting four‐dimensionalism about the persistence of physical objects, Campbell regards constitutionalism as the main rival version of the psychological approach. He argues that his “series view” has two clear advantages over constitutionalism: it avoids the “two thinkers” objection and …
The Metaphysics of Everyday Life: An Essay in Practical Realism - Lynne Rudder Baker
In this book Lynne Baker elaborates, modifies and defends some of the main ideas of her celebrated book on personal identity, Persons and Bodies (Cambridge UP, 2000). Her overall aim this time, however, is to establish ‘a metaphysical view that respects the irreducible variety of things and properties in the world’ (p. 21). Unsurprisingly, she maintains that we need her ‘constitution view’ to accomplish this task. As always, her discussions are t…
Being and Betterness
In this article I discuss the question of whether a person's existence can be better (or worse) for him than his non-existence. Recently, Nils Holtug and Melinda A. Roberts have defended an affirmative answer. These defenses, I shall argue, do not succeed. In different ways, Holtug and Roberts have got the metaphysics and axiology wrong. However, I also argue that a person's existence can after all be better (or worse) for him than his non-existe…
The Timing Problem
This chapter, which examines the argument of Epicurus about the timing problem of death, clarifies the Epicurean challenge and identifies some merits and disadvantages of the various anti-Epicurean views. It also explains the concept of several relevant principles including atemporalism, subsequentism, priorism, concurrentism, and eternalism, arguing that the Epicurean argument and its premises are valid.
Swedish Employers and Trade Unions, Varieties of Capitalism and Labour Migration Policies
This article explores the extent to which the varieties of capitalism (VoC) approach can inform our understanding of the role of organised interests in the process of labour migration policy reform in Sweden during the 2000s. VoC scholars maintain that policymakers prefer reforms conforming to the national political economy. Employers are also thought to support policies incentivecompatible with the prevailing model of capitalism. The analysis pr…
Dead and Gone? Reply to Jenkins
In a recent article, Joyce L. Jenkins challenges the common belief that desire satisfactionists are committed to the view that a person's welfare can be affected by posthumous events. Jenkins argues that desire satisfactionists can and should say that posthumous events only play an epistemic role: though such events cannot harm me, they can reveal that I have already been harmed by something else. In this response, however, we show that Jenkins's…
Preferenser och intressen hos Svenskt Näringsliv och Landsorganisationen om arbetskraftsinvandring under 2000-talets inledning
Preferences and interests of SN and LO about labour migration in the early 2000sThe article uses a political economy approach to analyze the preferences of the social partners SN and LO and to identify the coincided and disparate interests which the two organizations tried to defend in relation to labour migration in the debate prior to the Swedish labour migration policy reform in 2008. In contrast to presumptions by Varieties of Capitalism (VoC…
Well-Being without Being? A Reply to Feit
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 w…
A Worthy Reception? Ambivalences in Social Work With Refugees and Migrants in Sweden
The purpose of this article is to analyze how reception practices and the meaning of a 'worthy' reception of refugees and migrants are negotiated in encounters between various receiving actors in times of shifting Swedish migration policies. The analysis is grounded in ethnographic methodology and draws on data collected in 2016. The aim of the study was to document experiences of the so-called 'refugee crisis' in Europe and Scandinavia from a bo…
Bontly on Harm and the Non-Identity Problem
The ‘non-identity problem’ raises a well-known challenge to the person-affecting view, according to which an action can be wrong only if it affects someone for the worse. In a recent article, however, Thomas D. Bontly proposes a novel way to solve the non-identity problem in person-affecting terms. Bontly's argument is based on a contrastive causal account of harm. In this response, we argue that Bontly's argument fails even assuming that the con…
Well-Being Counterfactualist Accounts of Harm and Benefit
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 acc…
Does Abortion Harm the Fetus
A central claim in abortion ethics is what might be called the Harm Claim – the claim that abortion harms the fetus. In this article, we put forward a simple and straightforward reason to reject the Harm Claim. Rather than invoking controversial assumptions about personal identity, or some nonstandard account of harm, as many other critics of the Harm Claim have done, we suggest that the aborted fetus cannot be harmed for the simple reason that i…
The Significance of Tiny Contributions: Barnett and Beyond
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 (a much stronger …
Causal Accounts of Harming
A popular view of harming is the causal account (CA), on which harming is causing harm . CA has several attractive features. In particular, it appears well equipped to deal with the most important problems for its main competitor, the counterfactual comparative account (CCA). However, we argue that, despite its advantages, CA is ultimately an unacceptable theory of harming. Indeed, while CA avoids several counterexamples to CCA, it is vulnerable …
Migrant Life Stories as Digital Heritage
Following the ambitions of international and national policy makers to digitalize the cultural heritage sector, a growing research field that deals with digitalization and cultural heritage has emerged. However, it has been argued that too much focus has been placed on technology and information policy issues and that research on how to achieve administrative effectiveness and preservation has taken precedence over studies of different actors' en…
A Simple Analysis of Harm
In this paper, we present and defend an analysis of harm that we call the Negative Influence on Well-Being Account (NIWA). We argue that NIWA has a number of significant advantages compared to its two main rivals, the Counterfactual Comparative Account (CCA) and the Causal Account (CA), and that it also helps explain why those views go wrong. In addition, we defend NIWA against a class of likely objections, and consider its implications for sever…
Plural harm: Plural problems
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 a…
Unruh's hybrid account of harm
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
Doing Harm: A Reply to Klocksiem
In a recent article in this journal, Justin Klocksiem proposes a novel response to the widely discussed failure to benefit problem for the counterfactual comparative account of harm (CCA). According to Klocksiem, proponents of CCA can deal with this problem by distinguishing between facts about there being harm and facts about an agent's having done harm. In this reply, we raise three sets of problems for Klocksiem's approach
Pitcovski’s explanation-based account of harm
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 …
Benefits are Better than Harms: A Reply to Feit
We have argued that the counterfactual comparative account of harm and benefit (CCA) violates the plausible adequacy condition that an act that would harm an agent cannot leave her much better off than an alternative act that would benefit her. In a recent paper in this journal, however, Neil Feit objects that our argument presupposes questionable counterfactual backtracking. He also argues that CCA proponents can justifiably reject the condition…
Prudential Problems for the Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harm and Benefit
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
The Worse than Nothing Account of Harm: A Fallen Hero
Daniel Immerman has recently put forward a novel account of harm, the Worse than Nothing Account . We argue that this account faces fatal problems in cases in which an agent performs several simultaneous actions. We also argue that our criticism is considerably more powerful than another one that has recently been advanced
Epistemology (21 works) · Philosophy (20 works) · Economics (17 works) · Political science (14 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Harm (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Free Will and Agency (11 works) · Law and economics (11 works) · Positive economics (11 works)