Joona Räsänen
Biographic Data
| ID | 9197230 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joona Räsänen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joona |
| FAMILY NAME | Räsänen |
| SIGNATURE | RÄSÄNEN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Turku |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7383-6138 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
OnlyFans and Deep Fake Porn – Can We Accept the Former but Condemn the Latter?
Many people think that producing online pornography, such as creating sexual content at OnlyFans, is permissible. Many of the same people also think that creating deepfake pornography without or against the consent of the person is wrong. I argue that accepting online sex work is inconsistent with judging pornographic deepfakes as worse than non-pornographic deepfakes. This claim resembles similarity with a broader problem in sexual ethics raised…
Weighty matters: Ozempic, autonomy and the ethics of health reform
Ryan and Savulescu recently offered an ethical analysis of the use of semaglutide-based weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic. In this response, we continue the discussion and argue that their framework insufficiently addresses structural inequalities and the broader political context of obesity treatment. Positioning pharmaceutical drugs as a solution to socially produced health problems narrows moral decision-making, causing structural approaches t…
Fifty Years of Killing and Letting Die: On the Limits of Philosophical Bioethics
In 1975, The New England Journal of Medicine published James Rachels' article ‘Active and Passive Euthanasia’. The argumentative method that Rachels introduced, the Bare Difference Argument (also known as the Contrast Strategy), became one of the most widely used tools in ethical reasoning. The argument, however, fails to show active euthanasia being morally permissible. It fails because Rachels takes the intuitions from the case where letting di…
Ectogestation for men: Why aren't we talking about it
Andrea Bidoli argues that ectogestation could be seen as an emancipatory intervention for women. Specifically, she claims that ectogestation would create unique conditions to reevaluate one’s reproductive preference, address certain specific negative social implications of gestation and childbirth, and that it is unfair to hold ectogestation to a higher standard than other innovations such as modern contraceptives and non-medical egg freezing. In…
Defending the disease view of pregnancy: A reply to our critics
We recently suggested that there are both pragmatic and normative reasons to classify pregnancy as a disease. Several scholars argued against our claims. In this response, we defend the disease view of pregnancy against their criticism. We claim that the dysfunctional account of disease that some of our critics rely on has some counterintuitive results. Furthermore, we claim that our critics assume what needs to be argued that the primary functio…
Unexpecting: Abortion, informed consent and transformative experiences
Scholars in philosophy of medicine and bioethics have recently turned their attention to transformative experiences: experiences that teach something new that one could not have known before having the experience, while simultaneously changing one as a person. Sanne Elisa van der Marck recently argued, drawing on the work of Fiona Woollard, that the subjective experience of pregnancy should be included in moral debates on abortion, since pregnanc…
Is pregnancy a disease? A normative approach
In this paper, we identify some key features of what makes something a disease, and consider whether these apply to pregnancy. We argue that there are some compelling grounds for regarding pregnancy as a disease. Like a disease, pregnancy affects the health of the pregnant person, causing a range of symptoms from discomfort to death. Like a disease, pregnancy can be treated medically. Like a disease, pregnancy is caused by a pathogen, an external…
Why not coercive pronatalism
Lee argues that pronatalist policies in countries suffering from declining birth rates, such as South Korea, are ethically flawed.1 The ‘soft’ pronatalist policies Lee describes aim at persuading citizens to reproduce. For Lee, coercive pronatalist policies are so obviously unacceptable as not to merit consideration. However, we suggest that this is an issue that requires further analysis. When ethicists regard certain possibilities as not worth …
Missing references and citations at Google Scholar
Citation counts are often interpreted as measures of the impact or influence of academic work, and they have arguably become more significant in the competitive job market.1 Google Scholar is perhaps the most commonly used tool among scholars for measuring their citations, perhaps because it tends to be the most generous, including also a number of false positives. Unfortunately, a problem specific to Bioethics arises when Google Scholar indexes …
Would Adopting Triple-Blind Review Increase Female Authorship in Interdisciplinary Journals? A Comment on Hassoun et al
In the article “The Past 110 Years: Historical Data on the Underrepresentation of Women in Philosophy Journals,” Hassoun et al. claim that there is a connection between triple anonymous review and the proportion of women authors in interdisciplinary journals. However, the sample size of interdisciplinary journals using triple-blind review practice in the analysis is 1. In addition, the sole interdisciplinary journal claimed to be triple-blind, th…
Introduction to the Special Issue on Discrimination and Ethics in Dating and Sex
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study
The grim view of online dating—Rethinking Tinder
This paper recounts a dystopian tragedy, analogous to online dating, where people choose their partners from an enormous number of people, where rejections are made in the blink of an eye based on physical appearance and where men outnumber women. The moral of the story is discussed. It is argued that Tinder and other dating apps are a problem for justice and that this should be a public and political concern. It is suggested that we take measure…
Biting the bullet on ethical veganism, antinatalism, and the demands of morality
Reconsidering the utilitarian link between veganism and antinatalism
When biological ageing is desirable? A reply to García-Barranquero et al
García-Barranquero et al explore the desirability of human ageing. They differentiate between chronological and biological views of ageing and contend that the positive aspects of ageing are solely linked to chronological ageing. Consequently, the authors embrace the potential for technological interventions in biological ageing. Contrary to their stance, I argue that there are sometimes desirable aspects associated with biological ageing. Theref…
A critical take on procreative justice
Herjeet Kaur Marway recently proposed the Principle of Procreative Justice, which says that reproducers have a strong moral obligation to avoid completing race and colour injustices through their selection choices. In this article, we analyze this principle and argue, appealing to a series of counterexamples, that some of the implications of Marway's Principle of Procreative Justice are difficult to accept. This casts doubt on whether the princip…
Personality Discrimination and the Wrongness of Hiring Based on Extraversion
Employers sometimes use personality tests in hiring or specifically look for candidates with certain personality traits such as being social, outgoing, active, and extraverted. Therefore, they hire based on personality, specifically extraversion in part at least. The question arises whether this practice is morally permissible. We argue that, in a range of cases, it is not. The common belief is that, generally, it is not permissible to hire based…
Should vegans have children? Examining the links between animal ethics and antinatalism
Defending the link between ethical veganism and antinatalism
In my paper recently published in a collection of controversial arguments in this journal, I argued that the same principles that are behind ethical veganism also warrant antinatalist conclusions. I thus suggested that to be consistent in their ethical reasoning, moral vegans should not have children. William Bülow has kindly responded to my claims and offered a plausible reply, which, according to him, concludes that at least some moral vegans m…
Introduction: Controversial arguments in bioethics
Clarifying the Discussion on Prioritization and Discrimination in Healthcare
Discrimination is an important real-life issue that affects many individuals and groups. It is also a fruitful field of study that intersects several disciplines and methods. This Special Section brings together papers on discrimination and prioritization in healthcare from leading scholars in bioethics and closely related fields
Regulating abortion after ectogestation
A few decades from now, it might become possible to gestate fetuses in artificial wombs. Ectogestation as this is called, raises major legal and ethical issues, especially for abortion rights. In countries allowing abortion, regulation often revolves around the viability threshold—the point in fetal development after which the fetus can survive outside the womb. How should viability be understood—and abortion thus regulated—after ectogestation? S…
Egalitarianism, moral status and abortion: A reply to Miller
Calum Miller recently argued that a commitment to a very modest form of egalitarianism—equality between non-disabled human adults—implies fetal personhood. Miller claims that the most plausible basis for human equality is in being human—an attribute which fetuses have—therefore, abortion is likely to be morally wrong. In this paper, I offer a plausible defence for the view that equality between non-disabled human adults does not imply fetal perso…
Antinatalism—Solving everything everywhere all at once
In 2019, an Indian man named Raphael Samuel was planning to sue his parents for giving birth to him without his consent.1 Samuel believed that it was wrong to bring children into the world and subject them to a lifetime of suffering. A similar premise is depicted in a 2018 Lebanese movie directed by Nadine Labaki, where a 12-year-old child from the slums of Beirut intends to sue his parents.2 The boy is brought before a court, having decided to t…
Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem
BioethicsVolume 37, Issue 2 p. 101-102 GUEST EDITORIAL Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem? Joona Räsänen, Corresponding Author Joona Räsänen [email protected] Department of Political Science, School of Business and Social Sciences, CEPDISC—Centre for the Experimental-Philosophical Study of Discrimination, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark Correspondence Joona Räsänen, Department of Political Science, School of Business and Soci…
No prominent works on this page.
Age change in healthcare settings: A reply to Lippert-Rasmussen and Petersen
Lippert-Rasmussen and Petersen discuss my ‘Moral case for legal age change’ in their article ‘Age change, official age and fairness in health’. They argue that in important healthcare settings (such as distributing vital organs for dying patients), the state should treat people on the basis of their chronological age because chronological age is a better proxy for what matters from the point of view of justice than adjusted official age. While ad…
Against the impairment argument: A reply to Hendricks
In an article of this journal, Perry Hendricks makes a novel argument for the immorality of abortion. According to his impairment argument, abortion is immoral because: (a) it is wrong to impair a fetus to the nth degree, such as causing the fetus to have fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS); (b) it is wrong to impair a fetus to the n +1 degree (to cause the fetus to be more impaired than to have FAS); (c) killing the fetus impairs the fetus to the n +1 …
The ethics of ectogenesis
Liberal Utilitarianism—Yes, But for Whom
In his important paper “Just Better Utilitarianism,” Matti Häyry reminds his readers that liberal utilitarianism can offer a basis for moral and political choices in bioethics and thus could be helpful in decisionmaking.(1) Although I agree with the general defense of Häyry’s liberal utilitarianism, in this commentary, I urge Häyry to say more on who belongs to our moral community. I challenge Häyry’s principle of actual or prospective existence.…
Age and ageing: What do they mean
This article provides a philosophical overview of different approaches to age and ageing. It is often assumed that our age is determined by the amount of time we have been alive. Here, I challenge this belief. I argue that there are at least three plausible, yet unsatisfactory, accounts to age and ageing: the chronological account, the biological account, and the experiential account. I show that all of them fall short of fully determining what i…
Who should have access to assisted gestative technologies
Romanis has written another interesting and important paper on reproductive ethics entitled assisted gestative technologies.1 In this short commentary, I continue the discussion on the question of who should have access to AGTs. This commentary should not be understood as a critical reply but as a friendly extension of one of the paper’s themes. I am not trying to solve the question of who should have access to these technologies but I put forth …
Does overruling Roe discriminate against women (of colour)
On 24 July 2022, the landmark decision Roe v. Wade (1973), that secured a right to abortion for decades, was overruled by the US Supreme Court. The Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organisation severely restricts access to legal abortion care in the USA, since it will give the states the power to ban abortion. It has been claimed that overruling Roe will have disproportionate impacts on women of color and that restricting access …
Ethics of fetal reduction: A reply to my critics
In the article, Twin pregnancy, fetal reduction and the ‘all or nothing problem’, I argued that there is a moral problem in multifetal pregnancy reduction from a twin to a singleton pregnancy (2-to-1 MFPR). Drawing on Horton’s original version of the ‘all or nothing problem’, I argued that there are two intuitively plausible claims in 2-to-1 MFPR: (1) aborting both fetuses is morally permissible, (2) aborting only one of the twin fetuses is moral…
Twin pregnancy, fetal reduction and the 'all or nothing problem’
Fetal reduction is the practice of reducing the number of fetuses in a multiple pregnancy, such as quadruplets, to a twin or singleton pregnancy. Use of assisted reproductive technologies increases the likelihood of multiple pregnancies, and many fetal reductions are done after in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer, either because of social or health-related reasons. In this paper, I apply Joe Horton’s all or nothing problem to the ethics of…
The complex case of Ellie Anderson
Ellie Anderson had always known that she wanted to have children. Her mother, Louise, was aware of this wish. Ellie was designated male at birth, but according to news sources, identified as a girl from the age of three. She was hoping to undergo gender reassignment surgery at 18, but died unexpectedly at only 16, leaving Louise grappling not only with the grief of losing her daughter, but with a complex legal problem. Ellie had had her sperm fro…
Abortion and the veil of ignorance: A response to Minehan
In a recent JME paper, Matthew John Minehan applies John Rawls’ veil of ignorance against Judith Thomson’s famous violinist argument for the permissibility of abortion. Minehan asks readers to ‘imagine that one morning you are back to back in bed with another person. One of you is conscious and the other unconscious. You do not know which one you are’. Since from this position of ignorance, you have an equal chance of being the unconscious violin…
Should vegans have children? Examining the links between animal ethics and antinatalism
Defending the link between ethical veganism and antinatalism
In my paper recently published in a collection of controversial arguments in this journal, I argued that the same principles that are behind ethical veganism also warrant antinatalist conclusions. I thus suggested that to be consistent in their ethical reasoning, moral vegans should not have children. William Bülow has kindly responded to my claims and offered a plausible reply, which, according to him, concludes that at least some moral vegans m…
Introduction: Controversial arguments in bioethics
Clarifying the Discussion on Prioritization and Discrimination in Healthcare
Discrimination is an important real-life issue that affects many individuals and groups. It is also a fruitful field of study that intersects several disciplines and methods. This Special Section brings together papers on discrimination and prioritization in healthcare from leading scholars in bioethics and closely related fields
Regulating abortion after ectogestation
A few decades from now, it might become possible to gestate fetuses in artificial wombs. Ectogestation as this is called, raises major legal and ethical issues, especially for abortion rights. In countries allowing abortion, regulation often revolves around the viability threshold—the point in fetal development after which the fetus can survive outside the womb. How should viability be understood—and abortion thus regulated—after ectogestation? S…
Egalitarianism, moral status and abortion: A reply to Miller
Calum Miller recently argued that a commitment to a very modest form of egalitarianism—equality between non-disabled human adults—implies fetal personhood. Miller claims that the most plausible basis for human equality is in being human—an attribute which fetuses have—therefore, abortion is likely to be morally wrong. In this paper, I offer a plausible defence for the view that equality between non-disabled human adults does not imply fetal perso…
Antinatalism—Solving everything everywhere all at once
In 2019, an Indian man named Raphael Samuel was planning to sue his parents for giving birth to him without his consent.1 Samuel believed that it was wrong to bring children into the world and subject them to a lifetime of suffering. A similar premise is depicted in a 2018 Lebanese movie directed by Nadine Labaki, where a 12-year-old child from the slums of Beirut intends to sue his parents.2 The boy is brought before a court, having decided to t…
Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem
BioethicsVolume 37, Issue 2 p. 101-102 GUEST EDITORIAL Sexual loneliness: A neglected public health problem? Joona Räsänen, Corresponding Author Joona Räsänen [email protected] Department of Political Science, School of Business and Social Sciences, CEPDISC—Centre for the Experimental-Philosophical Study of Discrimination, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark Correspondence Joona Räsänen, Department of Political Science, School of Business and Soci…
ICU triage decisions and biases about time and identity
We often show a greater inclination to assist and avoid harming people identified as those at high risk of great harm than to assist and avoid harming people who will suffer similar harm but are not identified (as yet). Call this the identified person bias. Some ethicists think such bias is justified; others disagree and claim that the bias is discriminatory against statistical people. While the issue is present in public policy and politics, per…
Biting the bullet on ethical veganism, antinatalism, and the demands of morality
Reconsidering the utilitarian link between veganism and antinatalism
When biological ageing is desirable? A reply to García-Barranquero et al
García-Barranquero et al explore the desirability of human ageing. They differentiate between chronological and biological views of ageing and contend that the positive aspects of ageing are solely linked to chronological ageing. Consequently, the authors embrace the potential for technological interventions in biological ageing. Contrary to their stance, I argue that there are sometimes desirable aspects associated with biological ageing. Theref…
A critical take on procreative justice
Herjeet Kaur Marway recently proposed the Principle of Procreative Justice, which says that reproducers have a strong moral obligation to avoid completing race and colour injustices through their selection choices. In this article, we analyze this principle and argue, appealing to a series of counterexamples, that some of the implications of Marway's Principle of Procreative Justice are difficult to accept. This casts doubt on whether the princip…
Personality Discrimination and the Wrongness of Hiring Based on Extraversion
Employers sometimes use personality tests in hiring or specifically look for candidates with certain personality traits such as being social, outgoing, active, and extraverted. Therefore, they hire based on personality, specifically extraversion in part at least. The question arises whether this practice is morally permissible. We argue that, in a range of cases, it is not. The common belief is that, generally, it is not permissible to hire based…
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