My name is Otto Lehto. Send me an e-mail.

I am a philosopher, political economist, public intellectual, composer and blogger.

Curriculum Vitae (2022): download here.

My current work focuses on utilitarianism, complexity theory, evolutionary political economy, transhumanism, human enhancement, basic income, social epistemology, and naturalism. I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow at New York University’s School of Law (2022-2024) and an affiliated Junior Researcher at Freiburg University’s FRIBIS Institute. I was also a visiting scholar at University of Arizona’s philosophy department (2020). I did my PhD at King’s College London’s Department of Political Economy (2021) under Prof. Mark Pennington and Dr. John Meadowcroft on the topic of “Complex Adaptation and Permissionless Innovation: An Evolutionary Approach to Universal Basic Income.” Prior to that, I did my BA in English (2009) and a Master of Social Science (MSSc) in Social and Moral Philosophy (2015) from the University of Helsinki. I am also the recipient of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) LAHP studentship (2017-2019), Adam Smith Fellowhip at George Mason University (2019-2020), and a Templeton Foundation Grant at King’s College London (2020).

I am especially interested in the following academic topics:

– Anglo-American political and moral philosophy
– anarchism, classical liberalism, and libertarianism
– complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
– evolutionary biology and Darwinian theory
– epistemology and the the study of the mind
– linguistics and semiotics
– musicology and the ludology
– history of ideas
– German and French philosophy (e.g. phenomenology & existentialism)

(Photo credit: Teemu Perhiö, 2013.)

In my free time I compose music and enjoy art and videogames.

I was the host of an online interview/talk show called Skyperadio.

Follow me on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter & YouTube:

I have been a long-running member of the Finnish Basic Income Network (BIEN Finland – Suomen perustuloverkosto), whose secretary I was in 2012-2014, and chairman in 2015-2016.

Come and join the Basic Income Earth Network of Finland:

You can read my earlier (now defunct) blogs (in Finnish):