Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij University of Copenhagen
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  • Postdoc, University of Copenhagen
  • PhD, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2010.

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About me
Post doc at University of Copenhagen (2010-2012). PhD in Philosophy from University of Massachusetts, Amherst (2010).
My works
12 items found.
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  1. Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij (forthcoming). Moderate Epistemic Expressivism. Philosophical Studies:-.
    The present paper argues that there are at least two equally plausible yet mutually incompatible answers to the question of what is of non-instrumental epistemic value. The hypothesis invoked to explain how this can be so—moderate epistemic expressivism—holds that (a) claims about epistemic value express nothing but commitments to particular goals of inquiry, and (b) there are at least two viable conceptions of those goals. It is shown that such expressivism survives recent arguments against a more radical form of epistemic (...)
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  2. Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij (forthcoming). Why Deliberative Democracy (Still) is Untenable. Public Affairs Quarterly.
    A common objection to deliberative democracy is that available evidence on public ignorance makes it unlikely that social deliberation among the public is a process likely to yield accurate outputs. The present paper considers—and ultimately rejects—two responses to this objection. The first response is that the correct conclusion to draw from the evidence is simply that we must work harder to ensure that the deliberative process improves the deliberators’ epistemic situation. The main problem for this response is that there are (...)
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  3. Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij (forthcoming). What's so Good About a Wise and Knowledgeable Public? Acta Analytica.
    Political philosophers have been concerned for some time with the epistemic caliber of the general public, qua the body that is, ultimately, tasked with political decision-making in democratic societies. Unfortunately, the empirical data paints a pretty dismal picture here, indicating that the public tends to be largely ignorant on the issues relevant to governance. To make matters worse, social psychological research on how ignorance tends to breed overconfidence gives us reason to believe that the public will not only lack knowledge (...)
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  4. Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij (2012). A General Theory of Domination and Justice. By Frank Lovett. (Oxford UP, 2010. Pp. 288. Price £53.00.). Philosophical Quarterly 62 (246):190-192.
    The review argues that Lovett’s theory of domination suffers from a problem. Lovett is aware of the problem and bites a fairly large bullet in response to it. What he does not seem aware of is that the problem can be avoided by opting for an account of welfare that he unfortunately ignores, despite the fact that it would serve his purposes well.
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  5. Kristoffer Ahlstrom (2011). Dream Skepticism and the Conditionality Problem. Erkenntnis 75 (1):45-60.
    Recently, Ernest Sosa (2007) has proposed two novel solutions to the problem of dream skepticism. In the present paper, I argue that Sosa’s first solution falls prey to what I will refer to as the conditionality problem, i.e., the problem of only establishing a conditional—in this case, if x, then I am awake, x being a placeholder for a condition incompatible with dreaming—in a context where it also needs to be established that we can know that the antecedent holds, and (...)
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  6. Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij (2011). Democracy and Moral Conflict – Robert B. Talisse. Philosophical Quarterly 61 (244):666-668.
    The review argues that Talisse's epistemic defense of democracy in his "Democracy and Moral Conflict," albeit novel and interesting, falls prey to an epistemic analogue of the problem of reasonable moral pluralism that Rawls famously posed for moral justifications of democracy.
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  7. Kristoffer Ahlstrom (2010). On Epistemic Agency. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
    Every time we act in an effort to attain our epistemic goals, we express our epistemic agency. The present study argues that a proper understanding of the actions and goals relevant to expressions of such agency can be used to make ameliorative recommendations about how the ways in which we actually express our agency can be brought in line with how we should express our agency. More specifically, it is argued that the actions relevant to such expressions should be identified (...)
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  8. Kristoffer Ahlstrom (2010). What Descartes Did Not Know. Journal of Value Inquiry 44 (3):297-311.
    Descartes’ epistemologies of meditation and sense imply that we cannot know anything about the mind-body union, either in the Cartesian sense of having scientia or, more interestingly, in terms of any other concept of knowledge available to Descartes. After considering the implications of this conclusion for what we may know about mind-body interaction, it becomes clear that, on Descartes’ view, we at best can be said to know that mind-body interaction, if it does in fact take place, does not violate (...)
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  9. Kristoffer Ahlstrom (2009). Intuitions in Epistemology: Towards a Naturalistic Alternative. Studia Philosophica Estonica 2:15-34.
    The present paper revisits the main methodological problems with conceptual analysis and considers two attempts to rectify them in terms of prototypes and reflective equilibria, respectively. Finding both wanting for the purposes of epistemological analysis, a naturalistic alternative is then sketched that explores the positive implications of aforementioned problems for the demarcation of the respective roles of intuitions and empirical investigation within three epistemological domains, viz., the evaluation of epistemological hypotheses, the amelioration of epistemic practices, and the construction of a (...)
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  10. Kristoffer Ahlström (2008). Constructive Analysis: A Study in Epistemological Methodology. Dissertation, University of Gothenburg
    The present study is concerned the viability of the primary method in contemporary philosophy, i.e., conceptual analysis. Starting out by tracing the roots of this methodology to Platonic philosophy, the study questions whether such a methodology makes sense when divorced from Platonic philosophy, and develops a framework for a kind of analysis that is more in keeping with recent psychological research on categorization. Finally, it is shown that this kind of analysis can be applied to the concept of justification in (...)
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  11. Kristoffer Ahlstrom (2008). Epistemology and Empirical Investigation. Grazer Philosophische Studien 76 (1):109-134.
    Recently, Hilary Kornblith has argued that epistemological investigation is substantially empirical. In the present paper, I will first show that his claim is not contingent upon the further and, admittedly, controversial assumption that all objects of epistemological investigation are natural kinds. Then, I will argue that, contrary to what Kornblith seems to assume, this methodological contention does not imply that there is no need for attending to our epistemic concepts in epistemology. Understanding the make-up of our concepts and, in particular, (...)
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  12. Kristoffer Ahlstrom (2005). Incorporating Feminist Standpoint Theory. Sats - Nordic Journal of Philosophy 6 (2):79-92.
    As has been noted by Alvin Goldman, there are some very interesting similarities between his Veritistic Social Epistemology (VSE) and Sandra Harding's Feminist Standpoint Theory (FST). In the present paper, it is argued that these similarities are so significant as to motivate an incorporation of FST into VSE, considering that (i) a substantial common ground can be found; (ii) the claims that go beyond this common ground are logically compatible; and (iii) the generality of VSE not only does justice to (...)
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