Seminar

Shifting Scope: Accounting for Instrumental Rationality

Held by Caj Strandberg, professor at the University of Oslo (UiO).

In the talk, I will try to develop a model of instrumental rationality: There is a general concept of instrumental rationality that is instantiated in two aspects which differ with regard to scope and coherence. Thus, rather than constituting competing accounts of the concept of instrumental rationality, they make up two instances of the same concept. The ‘primary aspect’ applies only to cases where an agent has reason to do what she intends to do, and conforms 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 conforms to a wide-scope requirement. At the end, I will briefly apply the model to a structure-based view of instrumental rationality.