University of Helsinki

Post-Doc, Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies

Other Affiliations: Durham University, Department of Philosophy

Post Doctoral Researcher

About

I am a Finnish philosopher working at the Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, University of Helsinki. I've also worked at Durham University in the UK for five years between 2005 and 2010.

In January 2011 I started a three year Postdoctoral Researcher's Project on the foundations of metaphysics. The project is funded by The Academy of Finland and includes periods of research abroad, at New York University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

I took my Master's degree in philosophy at Helsinki between 2002 and 2005, which in Finland also includes studies equivalent to the British BA. My Master's thesis was entitled Grounding Metaphysics: Metaphysical Necessity and Essentialism. Between 2005 and 2008 I worked on my Ph.D. thesis, The Necessity of Metaphysics, at Durham under the supervision of Professor E. J. Lowe. I passed my viva in April 2008. I was a Visiting Research Fellow at Durham between December 2008 and December
2010.

My primary research interests are in contemporary analytic metaphysics and the methodology of metaphysics, especially a priori knowledge, modality, and essences, but I also have research interests in philosophical logic, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science.

In my Ph.D. thesis I argue for a rigorously realist, Aristotelian understanding of metaphysics and defend the role of metaphysics in contemporary analytic philosophy. The central themes of the thesis concern a priori knowledge, modality, and essences.

I am currently working on a book provisionally entitled 'A Study of the Foundations of Metaphysics: Apriority, Modality, and Essence', which develops the main themes of my PhD thesis. I am also the editor of 'Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics' (Cambridge University Press, 2012). The volume brings together leading philosophers working in or at least sympathetic to what could be called 'Aristotelian metaphysics', that is, metaphysics conceived in a realist fashion, as the 'first philosophy'.

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