Caj Strandberg

University of Oslo, Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, Faculty Member

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Papers by Caj Strandberg

Neo-Humean Rationality and the Profoundest Problem in Ethics

Problems of Choice: Normativity, Rationality, Axiology, and Morality, Mathea Slåttholm Sagdahl and Attila Tanyi (eds.), London: Routledge, 2026

This chapter puts forward a Neo-Humean view on reasons that combines the distinction between rati... more This chapter puts forward a Neo-Humean view on reasons that combines the distinction between rationally requiring reasons and rationally justifying reasons with a Neo-Humean view on rationality which understands this notion in terms of coherence between final desires and pro-attitudes. According to this view, moral reasons consist in rationally justifying reasons whereas prudential reasons consist in rationally requiring reasons. In contrast to a reasonsbased view on rationality, the view makes it possible to explain and compare an agent's moral and prudential reasons by employing the notion of rationality. The view entails that an agent's moral reasons might be stronger than her prudential reasons in that she is rationally justified to act in accordance with the former instead of the latter. At the same time, it accounts for the contention that an agent need not be irrational if she does not adhere to her moral reasons.

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Neo-Humean rationality and the unity of practical normativity

Synthese, 2025

A unified view of practical rationality needs to meet two requirements: explain facts about pract... more A unified view of practical rationality needs to meet two requirements: explain facts about practical rationality in terms of one single type of facts and account for the connections between practical rationality and other normatively significant notions. In this paper, I propose a Neo-Humean structure-based view on rationality and suggest that it, in contrast to a reason-based view, is able to meet these requirements. As regards the first requirement, I argue that facts about practical rationality can be ultimately explained by facts about coherence between attitudes towards ends and means, particularly between final desires and intentions. As regards the second requirement, I argue that facts about normative reasons can be ultimately explained by facts about practical rationality thus understood, resulting in a Neo-Humean view on reasons. Thereby, rationality is explained by coherence, reasons by rationality, and, consequently, reasons by coherence.

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Shifting scope: A Model of Instrumental Rationality

Theoria, 2025

The paper develops a new model of instrumental rationality: There is a general concept of instrum... more The paper develops a new model of instrumental rationality: There is a general concept of instrumental rationality that has two types of instances which differ with regard to coherence and scope. The 'primary aspect' applies in effect only to cases where an agent has reason to do what she intends to do, and corresponds to a narrow-scope requirement. The 'secondary aspect' applies also to cases where an agent does not have reason to do what she intends to do, and corresponds to a wide-scope requirement. The model has a number of significant features: (i) It enables accounts of the connections between instrumental rationality and coherence. (ii) It enables accounts of the connections between instrumental rationality and reasons. (iii) It makes it possible to explain different cases of instrumental rationality and irrationality, and how they are related to one another. The model can be employed by both structure-based and reason-based views on instrumental rationality that consequently may make use of its explanatory resources.

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SMITH ON THE PRACTICALITY AND OBJECTIVITY OF MORAL JUDGMENTS

Belgrade Philosophical Annual, 2024

The moral problem presented by Michael Smith in his seminal book with the same name consists of t... more The moral problem presented by Michael Smith in his seminal book with the same name consists of three claims that are intuitively plausible when considered separately, but seem incompatible when combined: moral judgments express beliefs about objective moral facts, moral judgments are practical in being motivational, and beliefs are unable to motivate by themselves. An essential aspect of Smith's solution to the moral problem is the contention that moral judgments are both motivating for rational agents and objective. In this paper, I take a close look at Smith's arguments by considering his characterizations of rationality understood as coherence between attitudes. It is suggested that on this understanding of rationality and coherence, it has not been clearly shown that moral judgments are both practical and objective.

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Properties, Moral

International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Feb 1, 2013

Recension av Niklas Möller, Thick Concepts in Practice: Normative Aspects of Risk and Safety

Expressivism and Dispositional Desires

American Philosophical Quarterly, 2010

Accordi ng to a persistent objection against metaethical expressivism, this view is committed to ... more Accordi ng to a persistent objection against metaethical expressivism, this view is committed to a strong version of internalism that is unable to account for cases where a person's moral judgment and motivation come apart. recently, leading expressivists have argued that they can meet this objection by maintaining that moral judgments consist in noncognitive states that motivate in normal conditions. In this article, it is maintained that an important dimension of internalism has, on the whole, gone unnoticed: internalist claims vary depending on whether moral judgments and motivation are understood as dispositional states or occurrent states. This variation can be invoked in an argument showing that expressivists are indeed committed to versions of internalism that make it impossible to account for cases in which moral judgment and motivation diverge.

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A Structural Disanalogy between Aesthetic and Ethical Value Judgments

It is often suggested that aesthetic and ethical value judgements are similar in such a way that ... more It is often suggested that aesthetic and ethical value judgements are similar in such a way that they should be analysed in analogous manners. In this paper, I argue that the two types of judgements share four important features concerning disagreement, motivation, categoricity, and argumentation. This, I maintain, helps to explain why many philosophers have thought that aesthetic and ethical value judgements can be analysed in accordance with the same dispositional scheme which corresponds to the analogy between secondary qualities and values. However, I argue that aesthetic and ethical value judgements differ as regards their fundamental structures. This scheme is mistaken as regards ethical value judgements, but it is able to account for aesthetic value judgements. This implies that aesthetic value judgements are autonomous in relation to ethical value judements and that aestheticians, not moral philosophers, are the true heirs of this renowned analogy.

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Towards an Ecumenical Theory of Normative Reasons

Dialectica, Mar 1, 2018

A theory of normative reasons for action faces the fundamental challenge of accounting for the du... more A theory of normative reasons for action faces the fundamental challenge of accounting for the dual nature of reasons. On the one hand, some reasons appear to depend on, and vary with, desires. On the other hand, some reasons appear categorical in the sense of being desire-independent. However, it has turned out to be difficult to provide a theory that accommodates both these aspects. Internalism is able account for the former aspect, but has difficulties to account for the latter, whereas externalism is vulnerable to the reverse problem. In this paper, I outline an ecumenical view that consists of two parts: First, I defend a distinction between requiring reasons and justifying reasons in terms of their different connections to rationality. Second, I put forward a subjectivist, procedural, view of rationality. The ecumenical alternative, I argue, is able to accommodate the mentioned duality within a unified theory. In outlining this view, I also suggest that it has a number of other significant advantages.

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Options for Hybrid Expressivism

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Apr 28, 2014

In contemporary metaethics, various versions of hybrid expressivism have been proposed according ... more In contemporary metaethics, various versions of hybrid expressivism have been proposed according to which moral sentences express both non-cognitive attitudes and beliefs. One important advantage with such positions, its proponents argue, is that they, in contrast to pure expressivism, have a straightforward way of avoiding the Frege-Geach problem. In this paper, I provide a systematic examination of different versions of hybrid expressivism with particular regard to how they are assumed to evade this problem. The major conclusion is that none of these views succeeds to provide both a fully satisfying interpretation of moral sentences and a convincing response to the Frege-Geach problem. I end by briefly considering alternative hybrid views that employ the notion of conventional or conversational implicature.

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A Dual Aspect Account of Moral Language

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Jan 11, 2011

It is often observed in metaethics that moral language displays a certain duality in as much as i... more It is often observed in metaethics that moral language displays a certain duality in as much as it seems to concern both objective facts in the world and subjective attitudes that move to action. In this paper, I defend The Dual Aspect Account which is intended to capture this duality: A person's utterance of a sentence according to which φing has a moral characteristic, such as "φing is wrong," conveys two things: The sentence expresses, in virtue of its conventional meaning, the belief that φing has a moral property, and the utterance of the sentence carries a generalized conversational implicature to the effect that the person in question has an action-guiding attitude in relation to φing. This account has significant advantages over competing views: (i) As it is purely cognitivist, it does not have the difficulties of expressivism and various ecumenical positions. (ii) Yet, in spite of this, it can explain the close, "meaning-like," connection between moral language and attitudes. (iii) In contrast to other pragmatic accounts, it is compatible with any relevant cognitivist view. (iv) It does not rest on a contentious pragmatic notion, such as conventional implicature. (v) It does not imply that utterances of complex moral sentences, such as conditionals, convey attitudes. In addition, the generalized implicature in question is fully calculable and cancellable. In the next section, I spell out the relevant notion of the practicality of moral language. In Section 3, I provide a brief overview of relevant metaethical positions and spell out how this paper contributes to the debate. It is observed that expressivism has a number of difficulties which motivate that we consider a purely cognitivist view combined with a pragmatic story of the practicality of moral language. In Section 4, I provide a short reminder of Grice's theory of implicatures. In Section 5, I argue that the two most prominent pragmatic accounts, proposed by David Copp and Stephen Finlay, suffer from important problems. In the main part of the paper, Section 6 through 13, I develop The Dual Aspect Account. Moral conversations have dual purposes: to communicate moral beliefs and to influence action. Correspondingly, a person's utterance of a sentence to the effect that an action has a moral characteristic conveys two things: First, such a sentence, in virtue of having a certain conventional meaning, expresses the belief that the action has a moral property. Second, an utterance of this type of sentence carries a generalized conversational implicature to the effect that the person in question has a certain action-guiding attitude in relation to the action. This account, it will be argued, captures the duality of moral language, and particular, offers a model of the various mechanisms that make moral language practical. The Dual Aspect Account has important advantages over competing pragmatic views of the practicality of moral language. It does not presuppose any contentious pragmatic notion, such as conventional implicature, and it does not imply that utterances of complex moral sentences, such as conditionals, necessarily convey attitudes (in contrast to Copp's view). It is able to explain the intimate, "meaning-like," connection between moral language and attitudes, and it does not presuppose any particular cognitivist theory (in contrast to Finlay's view). Indeed, it is compatible with any purely cognitivist view of the relevant kind. Moreover, the conversational implicature in question is calculable and cancellable in Grice's sense. Moral language has been claimed to be practical in a number of respects, but the one that is pertinent here distinguishes moral language from other parts of language. 1 One feature that seems to be characteristic of moral language is that we take for granted that

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Neo‐Humean rationality and two types of principles

Analytic Philosophy, Nov 8, 2022

According to the received view in metaethics, a Neo-Humean theory of rationality entails that the... more According to the received view in metaethics, a Neo-Humean theory of rationality entails that there cannot be any objective moral reasons, i.e. moral reasons that are independent of actual desires. In this paper, I argue that there is a version of this theory that is compatible with the existence of objective moral reasons. The key is to distinguish between (i) the process of rational deliberation that starts off in an agent's actual desires, and (ii) the rational principle that an agent employs in such a process. I maintain that it is the latter which explains why it is rational for an agent to have a certain desire, not the former. As a result, there might be two types of principles. The second type of principle leaves room for objective moral reasons.

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