Senior Lecturer, Undergraduate Advisor (Philosophy)

Qualifications: PhD Philosophy

About Dan

Office Hours:  A Semester 2019: Tuesday 2:10-3:00pm and Wednesday 1:10-2:00pm or by appointment.

Profile:
Born in England, I have lived most of my life in New Zealand. Before taking up a lectureship at University of Waikato in 2016, I was an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Sacramento for two years. Prior to my California experience, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Philosophy Department at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW). I have honours degrees in marketing and philosophy from VUW, as well as an MA and a PhD in philosophy, also from VUW. I currently live near Hamilton in New Zealand with my wife Linda, and our children Eli and Asher.

Research Interests

Research Specialties:

• Normative ethics (especially hedonism, wellbeing, and experimental normative ethics)
• Applied ethics (especially the ethics of prediction markets)
• Interdisciplinary happiness/wellbeing research (especially wellbeing and public policy, philosophy of happiness science, and conceptions of happiness)

Other Areas of Interest:
Political Philosophy, Public Policy, Experimental Philosophy, Climate Justice,  Moral Psychology, Philosophy of Psychology, Bioethics, Neuroethics, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Economics, Philosophy of Law, Business Ethics, Cross-Cultural Psychology, Social Psychology, Behavioral Economics, and The Meaning of Life.

Featured Publications

1. Weijers, Dan and Richardson, Jennifer (2014). A Moral Analysis of Effective Prediction Markets on Terrorism. International Journal of Technoethics, special issue: "Military Technoethics Beyond", 5(1): 28-43. My last version. Official version
2. Weijers, Dan (2014). Optimistic Naturalism: Scientific Advancement and the Meaning of Life, Sophia, 53: 1-18. My last version. The official version
3. Weijers, Dan (2014). Nozick's Experience Machine is Dead, Long Live the Experience Machine!, Philosophical Psychology, 27(4): 513-535. My last version. The official version
4. Joshanloo, Mohsen & Weijers, Dan (2014). Aversion to happiness across cultures: A review of where and why people are averse to happiness, Journal of Happiness Studies, 15(3): 717-735. My last version.The official version
5. Weijers, Dan & Jarden, Aaron (2013). The Science of Happiness for Policymakers: An Overview, Journal of Social Research and Policy, 4(2). The free official version
6. Weijers, Dan & Schouten, Vanessa (2013). An assessment of recent responses to the experience machine objection to hedonism, Journal of Value Inquiry, 47(4), 461-482. My last version. The official version
7. Weijers, Dan (2013). Intuitive Biases in Judgements about Thought Experiments: The Experience Machine Revisited, Philosophical Writings, 41(1): 17-31. The free official version

Forthcoming Publications

• Weijers, Dan & Jarden, Aaron (forthcoming). The International Journal of Wellbeing: The Power of Open Access, in Rajiv Jhangiani & Robert Biswas-Diener (eds.), Open: The philosophy and practices that are revolutionizing psychological science and education. Ubiquity Press. Last author version.
• Weijers, Dan (forthcoming-2016). Prediction Markets, in Robert W. Kolb (ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society: 2nd edition. Sage. Last author version.
• Weijers, Dan & Jarden, Aaron (forthcoming-2016). Wellbeing Policy: An Overview, in Mike Slade, Lindsay Oades & Aaron Jarden (eds.), Wellbeing, Recovery and Mental Health. Cambridge University Press. (This chapter reproduces some of the material from Weijers, Dan & Jarden, Aaron. The Science of Happiness for Policymakers: An Overview). Last author version.
• Michalos, Alex & Weijers, Dan (forthcoming-2016). Chapter 1: Western Historical Traditions of Well-Being, in Richard Estes and Joseph Sirgy (eds.), The Pursuit of Well-Being: The Untold Global History, Springer.
• Weijers, Dan & Keyser, Vadim (forthcoming-2016). The Varieties and Dynamics of Moral Repugnance: Prediction Markets and Betting on Matters of Life and Death, The Humanities and Technology Review, 35(Fall 2016). Last author version

Recent Publications

• Joshanloo, M., & Weijers, D. (2019). Islamic perspectives on wellbeing. In L. Lambert, & N. Pasha-Zaidi (Eds.), Positive Psychology in the Middle East/North Africa (pp. 237-256). Springer.

• Joshanloo, M., & Weijers, D. (2019). A two-dimensional conceptual framework for understanding mental well-being. PLoS ONE, 14(3), 1-20. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0214045 Open Access version: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/12671

• Weijers, D. (2018). Prediction markets. In R. W. Kolb (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society (2nd ed., pp. 2716-2718). SAGE. doi:10.4135/9781483381503.n942

• Weijers, D., & Morrison, P. S. (2018). Wellbeing and public policy: Can New Zealand be a leading light for the ‘Wellbeing Approach’?. Policy Quarterly, 14(4), 3-12. Retrieved from https://www.victoria.ac.nz/ Open Access version: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/12535

View all research publications by Dan Weijers

Supervision

Lorenzo Buscicchi (PHD): Happiness and the state (Chief supervisor)

Kim Southey (PhD): Re-presenting Maori and Indigenous conceptualisations of ‘being’: Challenging notions of mental illness (On the supervisory panel)

Paul Hubble (PhD): We are what we make (On the supervisory panel)