Lecturer

Qualifications: PhD Philosophy

About Dan

Office Hours:  B Semester 2018: Monday 11:00-11:50am and Wednesday 10:00-10:50am 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 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.

Some Current Academic Roles:

• Founding co-editor of the International Journal of Wellbeing.
• Editorial advisory board member for the Journal of Philosophy of Emotion.
• Editorial review board member for the International Journal of Technoethics.
• Member of the Expert Group for the Global Happiness Organization.

Some Current Projects/Research:

• Examining what we value about our lives when we really think about it. An experimental philosophy book project with Peter Unger.
• Investigating famous 2-option moral thought experiments (starting with trolley problems) using experimental philosophy to assess what differences, if any, several-option versions of the scenarios make (in conjunction with Peter Unger and Justin Sytsma).
• An empirical paper comparing the happiness of philosophers to non-philosophers (it doesn't look good for philosophers!) with Matthew McDonald and Aaron Jarden.
• An edited book on wellbeing and public policy

PhD Topic:
My PhD (entitled Hedonism and Happiness in Theory and Practice) examines various topics at the intersection of happiness and philosophy. Many chapters are interdisciplinary, drawing on insights from psychology, economics and other disciplines.

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

• 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. M., & Jarden, A. (2017). Wellbeing Policy. In M. Slade, L. Oades, & A. Jarden (Eds.), Wellbeing, Recovery and Mental Health (pp. 24-34). Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781316339275.005 Open Access version: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/11742

• Weijers, D. M., & DiSilvestro, R. (2017). The morality of experience machines for palliative and end of life care. In Experience Machines: The Philosophy of Virtual Worlds (pp. 183-201). Rowman & Littlefield. Retrieved from http://www.danweijers.com/

• Weijers, D. M., & Jarden, A. (2017). The International Journal of Wellbeing: An open access success story. In R. Jhangiani, & R. Biswas-Diener (Eds.), Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science (pp. 181-194). London: Ubiquity Press. doi:10.5334/bbc Open Access version: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/11115

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)

Georgia Nichols (Summer Scholar): Happiness and the good life: Testing a new mixed methods approach (Supervisor)