I presented on “Six Conceptions of Freedom of Choice – a Defence of All-options Probabilism” at the Department of Philosophy at University of Birmingham (this is a modified title from the one advertised). I taught an intense graduate course in Public Helath Ethics at Copenhagen University with Angus Dawson and Søren Holm – graciously hosted by Signild Vallgårda and Jan Kyrre Friis.

Writing time was mostly spent preparing the Birmingham presentation and to be paper, where I take a stab at definitions of freedom, engaging Pettit, Kramer, Carter and others. And finalizing and submitting a new paper on the structure of antipaternalism (which has since been rejected, though one reviewer loved it and the other offered some rather superficial critique I thought, so probably worth another try).

I planned some events for spring, including a retreat for men at Mundekulla course and retreat centre (Småland, Sweden) in February.

And we had our second child and moved to Umeå. A home birth (recommended!) and then the birth of our new home.

I presented on “Paternalism and Autonomy as Legitimate Control” at the Mancept Workshops in Political Theory in Manchester, and I presented on “Antipaternalism as a filter on reasons” at the MESH (Medicine, Ethics, Society, History) seminar at the School of Health & Population Sciences at Birmingham university.

The special issue of Public Health Ethics that I have guest edited with Angus Dawson is out. It is on the ethics of health promotion, a rather vague topic really. I contribute with an editorial, with Angus, and with an article on “Responsibility, Paternalism and Alcohol Interlocks”, co-authored with Jessica Nihlén Fahlquist.

I have finally submitted my article on population ethics and wait to hear back.

I actually have some teaching this semester, planning a couple of lectures at Birmingham university and running an online essay course at Umeå university.

And we bought a house.

Much of May and June was spent preparing for two great conferences. First, there was the Society for Applied Philosophy annual conference in Oxford, where I presented on “Libertarian paternalism and true preferences”. The audience was constructive. This should become an article at some point. Then, there was the Association for Legal and Social Philosophy annual conference in Belfast, where I presented on “Defending and developing the probabilist account of freedom”. The audience was dominated by Philip Pettit, whose views I spend most of the presentation criticizing. Philip had some good responses of course, but I was not entirely convinced and so would like to develop this into an article as soon as possible. Both conferences offered many inspiring and educational talks that I wish I could remember better.

Meeting Philip Pettit in person, it was great to see how a famous and extremely accomplished colleague proved to also be a very nice guy. Not that this is unusual, quite the opposite. I am still amazed at how most philosophical titans I meet are so nice, despite their fame and their many causes to feel superior.

When not preparing conferences, I spent May and June working on my article on population ethics (still!) and on another article on the structure of antipaternalism, intended for an edited volume. I was also invited to and attended a nice one-day workshop on local food production in Birmingham, getting to taste some experimental food and discussing possible research projects with people from other disciplines. Not sure what my angle is, but there are of course many interesting ethical issues concerning both food production and food consumption.

I recorded three new programs for the Swedish national radio show thoughts for the day in April and they are now available as podcasts. They are on death, inheritance and family, having children, and on time and channels for positive contributions.

July was summer holidays – this year completely abstaining from any philosophical work.

I feel a bit frustrated that I don’t have more articles coming out of my current research project yet. Much time has been spent in preparation and working on long-term side projects that may or may not turn out worthwhile. At least my entry on Paternalism is now out in the new edition of Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, and I have had some positive feedback already. Anyone who feels that Dworkin’s entry in the Standford Encyclopedia is a bit brief may want to have a look (no open access but here is a preprint).

Last spring we were amazed by the awesome English weather. Now I know why people kept telling us it was an exception. Though England is still over all sunnier and more lush than we expected before we moved here. So we accept the relative cold, hoping for warmer days soon. A visit to Umeå in early April meant -10 degrees Celsius and masses of fresh, white snow. Umeå seemed to us a friendly and relaxed city. The philosophy department at Umeå university has mainly been focused on theoretical philosophy so far, but with Gunnar Björnsson the new chair professor since January, and an anticipated four (!) new lecturers in practical philosophy to be hired this year, look out for interesting developments.

Spring is conference season. I spent a full 10 days in Hamburg, at a conference/course/workshop for young scholars, focused on paternalism, beautifully organized by Professor Thomas Schramme and his colleagues (esp. Andreas Fallet). I met several interesting younger (even younger than me!) scholars that I expect to see more of in the future, and I finally got to meet the paternalism legend Gerald Dworkin. I think I failed to explain to him what is so interesting with libertarian paternalism, he just commented that he has made it a habit to repeatedly ask Richard Thaler to change the term (which makes sense). I have also been “free-riding” my way through the interesting Ideals and Reality conference in Newport, not bothering to submit a paper. And this weekend I flew to Lund for a one day conference on Philosophical Practice, organized by the recently founded Svenska sällskapet för filosofisk praxis, of which I am now a board member.

The Hamburg conference will result in an edited collection and I have started preparing a manuscript on the structure of anti-paternalism as a constraint on reasoning. In another paper under way I am arguing that neutralism in politics has this same structure. Once these papers are done I hope to do some writing more specifically on libertarian paternalism. I am scheduled to present on “Libertarian Paternalism and True Preferences” at the SAP conference in Oxford in late June, and to present a defense of the probabilist account of freedom at the ALSP conference in Belfast earlier that same week.

I have accepted the position as Lecturer in practical philosophy at Umeå university and will take up that position part-time this fall and full time from 2013. I look forward to being a full member of faculty. Here at Keele I am a guest and, while certainly treated very well, not really part of the team. Though to a large extent the team I am part of is spread out worldwide in the form of fellow philosophers and other researchers and others sharing interests and/or values. As a family, we also look forward to a more settled lifestyle and to having more Swedish-speaking children around.

Recently, I have been working on a pluralist framework for public health decisions together with my dear mentor and host Angus Dawson. Angus and I are also editing an issue on Health Promotion Ethics for his journal Public Health Ethics. I have yet again rewritten my presentation of a new theory for population ethics. This version will be presented at the higher seminar for practical philosophy at Umeå university in April. I have written a short text on true preferences and libertarian paternalism for a possible conference presentation and/or journal article.

I am scheduled to record another three programs for Swedish national radio’s Thoughts for the day. I keep up my organizational work with Filosofigruppen Sherpa, though I will not personally hold any philosophical salons this spring because of my location here in the UK. I am happy to be doing some philosophical counseling on the side, putting those abstract theories into the very personal context of people inspired to better understand their lives and worldviews.

The past two months have partly been focused on polishing papers I expected to be finished already – frustrating because I feel I should move on to other things and rewarding because I feel I am improving on already decent work. At the same time, I have been reading more texts on libertarian paternalism, my current main research project. Philosophers, economists, political scientists, epidemologists, and geographers all seem to have something to say. I have several ideas for papers and hope to soon get around to actually writing them.

Speaking of geography, October was spent in Scotland, mostly at Jeremy Inglish’ hostel in Oban – a very special place, run by Jeremy, 81, tending to everything from bookings to cleaning to preparing homemade marmelade. I warmly recommend it for shorter och longer visits.

More on geography: An upcoming job talk in Umeå, Sweden, has led the little family to weigh the pros and cons of a possible permanent position that far north in Sweden at a relatively small department. For now, the pros definately dominate – Umeå seems to be our kind of city (not too big for Camilla, not too small for me) and the department expanding. However, I am prepared to focus on the cons should I not get the job.

And a final note: During my five years as a doctoral student at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm I never got a chance to visit the site of the old Swedish nuclear reactor, R1, deep below campus. I now have, during the Live Roleplaying game Skyrmion : 11, an experimental and fascinating game.

We are back in the UK, though right at this moment I am in Copenhagen to take part in the live role-playing game Kapo. Otherwise, I keep working on my new theory in population ethics and, by editor request, a shortened version of my article on George Sher’s political perfectionism.

I forgot to mention that my review of Nudge (by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein) came out earlier this year, in Swedish, in Tidskrift för politisk filosofi. More recently, the Nordic Council of Ministers (more specifically the Nordic Committee on Bioethics) published the report Public Health: ethical issues. I contributed a chapter entitled “Individual Liberty in Public Health: no trumping value” which argues for the importance of liberty but against its priority relative to other values such as health (building partly on my “Anti-paternalism and the Invalidation of Reasons” published earlier this year).

The philosophical society Sherpa‘s saloons at Stockholm City library, open for the public, continue. I led a saloon on The Private Home, with Sara Belfrage, in August. The socity is open to broading our activities but have no concrete plans at this moment. In the meantime, the Swedish society for philosophical practice has been created. Living mostly in exile, I have not had the opportunity to take part more than applauding this development and becoming an early member.

My research plan for this academic year is to devide my time equally between libertarian paternalism and more traditional issues to do with paternalism.

Already mid August! I must have had better things to do than updating my precious webpage. Right now I’m enjoying a music (and much else) festival at Mundekulla course-and retreat centre, where I have spent most of the summer holidays with wife Camilla helping out at the centre and me and son Maui spending a lot of time together. Summer holidays usually start early in Sweden, at midsummer – summer solstice – at the latest. This unfortunately caused me to miss a few interesting conferences at Keele which where postponed into June due to the upheaval at the Centre for Professional Ethics (short-sighted cuts). Speaking of which, my mentor Angus Dawson and good friend David Hunter have both moved to the more philosophy-friendly environment at Birmingham university. I’m not sure if I will follow or stay at Keele. Either way I expect to see more of Birmingham.

It has been a good lesson to be “first parent” this summer, especially with the extra challenge of the working parent getting called in nights and weekends and never sticking to plan… And Mundekulla has been a beautiful place to be for that lesson. I took two small trips on my own – hiking in Jotunheimen, Norway, with a brother and both sisters, and refreshing some of my shorinjikempo moves at a camp in Gotland, Sweden.

When not playing with toy cars or splashing water, I’ve been working on three texts: “Normative and non-normative concepts – Paternalism and libertarian paternalism” (for anthology on health care ethics), “Constraints on political reasoning: Neutralism and anti-paternalism” (for special issue on Shaw’s Beyond Neutrality), and “Prospectualism in population ethics” (for fun). The first is now awaiting publisher approval, the second is soon to be (written and then) submitted, and the third is an ongoing side project.

In July, I attended Filosofidagarna [Philosophy Days] in Göteborg, for the first time properly PhD:d, feeling rather at home. I presented some thoughts on libertarian paternalism which I hope to develop during the fall.

My “thoughts for the day” (in Swedish) on P1 Swedish national radio aired in May and June and can now be accessed online: Om Tid. Om Äktenskap. Om Valfrihet.

The weather in Newcastle has been extraordinary. We fully enjoy living in a lush, warm and sunny place, so unlike our first impression when visiting last September. And Keele is still inspiring to me, despite upcoming cuts that will severely damage the Centre for Professional Ethics, to the detriment of this one time philosophically oriented university.

This month started in Bowling Green, Ohio, were I attended a workshop on Paternalism – first time ever surrounded by fellow paternalism scholars. Very inspiring.

By the middle of the month I was in Cheltenham, presenting a paper on voluntariness in live role-playing games. I have made the observation that when you are immersed in a shared secondary reality that is very fragile and can be interrupted by a simple unsuitable remark, it is rather impossible to evaluate what your in-game consent amounts to – it could signal that you are ok with the development of the game, but it could also signal that you strongly disagree with the development but find no believable way to say so in-game. This compromises the possibility to ensure voluntariness in-game and raises questions of what responsibility gamers have to one another.

The month ended in Sweden, where I met me fellow philosopher missionaries of Filosofigruppen Sherpa and recorded a few programs for Swedish national radio – Tankar för dagen in P1. Or it just about finished in Sweden, I saw students gathering in Uppsala for the Valborg celebration as I boarded my train to Arlanda, flying home to my little family.

In between these events and preparing for them (and reviewing a book and doing my taxes), I am sure I got some research done but cannot point to anything concrete, except the outline for a book on Paternalism.

New beginnings. Time of settling in at Keele, getting to know the area, making sure wife and son find their way around, enjoying a beautiful mid-English spring, fighting with UK bank and telecom systems. I am now a visiting member of PEAK – Professional Ethics at Keele, which in March was suddenly threatened by closure and barely survived. Strange, considering all the excellent research performed, though there are fewer students these past couple of years (a natural effect of the general economic downturn). Anyway, PEAK lives for now and I am happy to be here. My mentor Angus Dawson and my new friend David Hunter take good care of me.

I now should have much more time for research, but I have spent much of it thinking about the fundamentals of research, tidying up my files, improving my research routines etc. In February I took part in the workshop “Public Health Ethics: Scientific methods, foundational concepts, and case analyses” at Hannover Medical School. Nice format – five days, speakers only, single sessions. After the workshop, I spent some time on a paper on the concepts of paternalism and libertarian paternalism for a volume to be edited by the organizers. I presented a draft of this paper to my new colleagues at PEAK in late March. I was also invited to a one day conference at Lancaster University and presented some new thoughts on fairness in relation to health incentives. This too should become an article some day. I have a rather long list of articles to be written.