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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I also prepared a manuscript for a report for the Nordic Committee on Bioethics, describing how many apparently moderate positions on the justifiability of liberty-limiting (public health) policy incorporate elements of the same kind of trumping that is so problematic in strict or absolutist anti-paternalist positions and providing some arguments against such trumping. The arguments are losely based on a more thorough argument against trumping/invalidation in my Anti-paternalism and Invalidation of Reasons, which I was very happy to learn will be published by the new open access journal Public Reason. Though I realize that publication in more established (and more old-fashioned) journals is more prestigious (and I do submit to such journals), I cannot help feeling glad that this article will be accessible to all. In Januray, I also presented a version of these argument at the research institute Ratio in Stockholm.

January 1st was the official start of my three year Marie Curie Fellowship and the research project on Libertarian Paternalism and the Moral Limits of Public Health Policy, based at Uppsala university but with the first two years located to Keele University, U.K.

Not much has happened research-wise. I had a couple of abstracts for conferences accepted – I will talk on Libertarian Paternalism and Liberal Objections to Public Health in Hannover in February, and on Voluntariness in Live Role-playing Games in Gloucestershire (UK) in April. I have been invited by Ratio to give a talk on paternalism in January. I look forward to a spring semester of more research and more time at home with the family.

Talking of research, I have submitted a new version of an old and not yet published text on anti-paternalism to Public Reason – a new open access journal. (All philosophy journals should go open access.) I have also developed a text from last semester on the value of populations, to be presented at the higher seminar in practical philosophy in Uppsala in October. And I have written a review of a doctoral thesis (by Erik Malmqvist) on genetic enhancement for Tidskrift för Politisk Filosofi.

As for more public events, I held a philosophical saloon on “What is natural?” with my friend Jon Jordås at Stockholm City Library in September, and continue working with Filosofigruppen Sherpa, as coordinator/president and occasional blogger.

I am still slowly working on finishing up my education in philosophical counseling and will consider requests for private counseling.

Grading my course at Örebro University used up a lot of my working time in June – too ambitious perhaps to give personal feedback on the written assignment to 140 students. July was completely free of philosophy, dedicated instead to organizing a camp on communal living and co-counseling at Mundekulla Retreat Centre, and taking part in the Live Role-playing game Krigshjärta, as a sadistic pirate priest(!).

Since I didn’t do enough relaxing in July, it spilled over into August. At the moment, I enjoy finding my way back to my philosophical pursuits!

In April I held a philosophical salon on Future Generations at Stockholm city library with my friend Lars Lindblom and one on my own on Love at Falun city library, my old home town. I prepared for a conference in Iceland that was cancelled due to the ash cloud and we visited Malta to celebrate my father’s 60th birthday. On last of April I held the traditional speech to the spring here in Stjärnsund, a pleasant honor. I also started preparations to sell my apartment in Stockholm, taking another step away from a past life. And, not least, I received the rank of first Dan in Shorinji Kempo, the martial art I practice.

May was partly focused on getting the apartment ready for viewing, it is now sold for slightly less than I expected and I had the peculiar experience of being disappointed with a mere 60% return on my investment over six years. I held a course in Technology and Ethics at Örebro University, worked on some old papers, and took part in a philosophical cruise to Finland, speaking again on Love. I should really write a short book on Love some day. I also work towards my graduation as philosophical counselor, receiving guests under supervision from my good teacher Helge Svare in Oslo.

It is now June and I fully enjoy sitting outside my little house, writing on my laptop, hearing the leaves and feeling the sun. In this setting even grading 140 essays from the Örebro course could be rather pleasant.