All are invited to a Philosophy Department colloquium talk on Monday 3rd March, 1:30 PM, in AC04 LR307, by Professor Antti Kauppinen.

Title: Well-Being and the Self

Abstract: The best kind of life for one person may not be the best kind of life for another person – it’s not the case that everyone is directly benefited by the same things. In this paper, I’m going to argue that for something to be a candidate for being in itself or basically good for someone, it must be expressive of who they are. For that to be the case, in turn, is for the putative good to constitute, manifest, or orient the person’s agency or sensibility, or those capacities whose functioning defines who they are. Crucially, this means that fit or suitability between a subject and a welfare good does not hang on their endorsement or resonance in terms of attitudes or hedonic states, in contrast to prevailing views. This increases the plausibility of non-subjectivist theories of well-being.

Bio: Antti Kauppinen is Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. His research focuses largely on ethics and metaethics, on topics like normativity, meaning in life, well-being, and moral sentiments. He has published papers on these topics in journals like the Journal of Moral Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophical Studies, Noûs, and Philosophers' Imprint. From 2019 to 2023, he was the PI of the Academy of Finland Research Project Responsible Beliefs: Why Ethics and Epistemology Need Each Other, and is now the co-PI of Maria Lasonen-Aarnio's Kone Foundation project The Many Faces of Inquiry (2024-2028).