Norms are ubiquitous both in our individual lives and when we act collectively, and the norms we accept shape our behaviour and thus also society as a whole. The norms in question are of many types and only a small subset have been crystallized into laws or explicitly stated standards. There are moral and ethical norms, and norms of practical rationality, but also epistemic norms that pertain to theoretical reasoning, aesthetic norms, and norms of interpretation, to mention a few. Because of their crucial role, norms are studied by several disciplines within the humanities and the social sciences, but the main focus has been on describing and explaining the formation and organization of norms. This doctoral programme focuses by contrast on the philosophical study of norms, which encompasses a wide range of research questions concerning norms and normativity, across a variety of domains and at different levels of abstraction. Here are some examples:

1. Which norms are appropriate or authoritative in different domains, such as morality, social relations, war, and our responsibility to future generations? 
2. Which norms should social and political institutions embody? 
3. To what extent is the nature of norms homogeneous across various domains? 
4. How should we define different kinds of norms: moral, prudential, aesthetic, social, political, and legal? 
5. What is the nature of normativity (what distinguishes the normative from the descriptive)?
6. What does it mean to say that a norm has authority or is appropriate and how do we determine appropriateness in different domains? 

The standard approach in philosophy is to focus on some specific version of one of these questions within a highly specialized subdiscipline. What is new in our doctoral school is a holistic approach to norms and normativity. Students are encouraged to identify important connections between these different questions and to explore innovative ways of combining the various methods of analysis that have been developed in the various subdisciplines. How the questions are related to each other can be a thesis topic on its own; for example, the thesis question can be whether the nature of normativity is different depending on what kind of norm we have in mind – moral, prudential, or social. But the student need not work on more than one of the questions to benefit from a holistic approach. Their research will still benefit significantly if they become aware of the other questions and their potential answers, because of the crucial connections between these questions. 

To enable students to understand these connections, the students will be encouraged to address the questions from different perspectives or subdisciplines within practical philosophy. The sub-disciplines will be taught in courses within the program. They include: 

Ethics, which seeks to answer the question of what is good or bad, how we should live, and how we should act, often by developing and assessing theories about these issues. Kantianism, virtue ethics, and utilitarianism are prominent examples. Practical problems, such as climate change, pandemics, antibiotic resistance, and war, are examined and guidance is offered for solving them, typically by employing concepts and arguments from ethical theory. The more applied side of ethics bridges ethical theory and our moral life. 

Political philosophy, which explores a wide range of topics relating to the organization of our collective social institutions. This includes the study of different political systems, such as democracy, liberalism, and socialism. It also includes questions about the authority and legitimacy of governments and other state institutions, as well as the study of fundamental notions such as justice and freedom. 

Metanormative studies, which is the philosophical study of normative judgment and language. It encompasses semantic questions about the meaning of normative concepts and terms and logical relations between these; metaphysical questions about whether there are normative facts and properties; epistemological questions about the possibility of normative knowledge; and psychological questions about whether normative judgments are beliefs or desires, and how they relate to our motivation to act. Metanormative studies also includes a branch that studies moral agency, responsibility, and blame. 

Decision and game theory, which concern the reasoning processes and actions in both individual decision-making and in interactions with others. The aim is to study, often using mathematical language, either how people in fact reason and act, or how they should reason and act, especially in choice situations in which they are uncertain about the outcomes of their actions. 

The philosophy of the social sciences and humanities addresses philosophical questions raised by the social and behavioural sciences, humanities, and cultural studies. Central questions concern the possibility of scientific knowledge and explanation in the human domain, and the role of interpretation and understanding, and how the social sciences, humanities, and cultural studies differ from the natural sciences. Since human interaction is steeped in norms, the philosophical study of social norms is a crucial research area. 

The history of the philosophy of norms and normativity, which focuses on the history of the different sub-disciplines listed above.

Philosophical aesthetics, which is concerned with the nature of different forms of art and the concepts in terms of which individual works of art are interpreted and evaluated. 

The purpose of the school is to achieve the following three strategic aims.

(1) Ensure that there is a critical mass of PhD students in practical philosophy. 

The philosophy discipline in the Swedish university system is divided into two sub-fields: practical philosophy and theoretical philosophy. The division goes back to the 18th century and the sub-fields are still pursued as independent research and educational domains, both administratively and content-wise. Practical philosophy focuses on human agency and questions about norms and normativity are central in all its core subjects, including decision theory, meta-ethics and meta-normativity, and the philosophy of the social sciences. Practical philosophy has been a flourishing field in Sweden in the last decades. Many of the researchers who received their doctorates during that period are now internationally recognized as leading experts. However, financial difficulties at the universities have made it hard even for major departments to sustain a population of more than two doctoral students at the moment. The result is an impoverished learning situation for those who are admitted to PhD programs and dwindling numbers of young PhDs. This risks the field’s future development and ultimately its existence. One aim of the research school is to remedy this situation. By being granted funds for the school and by pooling our departments’ teaching and supervision resources, we will be able to ensure that there is a critical mass of doctoral students who will be given adequate learning conditions, for example in the form of opportunities to continuously interact with a community of peers. 

(2) Adopt a holistic approach to issues about norms and normativity. 

Norms and normativity are addressed within practical philosophy by a number of sub-fields (such as decision theory and normative ethics), which use different methodological approaches. Progress is hampered, however, by the fact that those approaches are to a worrying extent pursued in isolation from each other. A second aim of the school is to resolve this problem by designing the school in such a way that students, regardless of their specific interests, are familiar with the most recent developments in all the sub-fields. This will not only benefit their own work but will influence research in the field as a whole, by facilitating understanding of how conceptual innovations and novel ideas in one of the sub-fields can generate insights that benefit discussions in the others. 

(3) Promote socially relevant research, informed by disciplines outside philosophy. 

The doctoral degree offered by the school will be one in practical philosophy, but the school will be designed so as to ensure that the students are also exposed to findings and theorizing in other types of norms research. This will not only benefit their dissertation work, but also prepare them for cooperation with researchers from other disciplines in their future work. The achievement of this aim is facilitated by the fact that two of the organizers (Bykvist and Tersman) have central roles at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm, which is an interdisciplinary research environment that hosts several projects about norms in which sociologists, psychologists, mathematicians, and linguists, philosophers, and others work together (see further www.iffs.se/en/). We want to stress that the study of norms is highly relevant to many of the most urgent societal concerns we presently face, in particular those involving large-scale collective action problems such as antibiotic resistance, pandemic preparation, and climate change. Determining which policies are likely to be effective to combat those problems requires a better understanding for example of how norms influence behaviour, how they spread, and how they compete with other types of motivation. The complexity of those issues clearly calls for interdisciplinary efforts, in which practical philosophy has an important role to play.

The management of the doctoral school consists of the steering board, the coordinator and the directors of study for the PhD-level from the three partner departments.

Steering board 

Krister Bykvist, the programme leader and representative of Stockholm University (SU)

Krister at Stockholm University

Krister at IFFS

Folke Tersman, the research leader and representative of Uppsala University (UU)

Folke at Uppsala university

Folke at IFFS

Ragnar Francén, the research leader and representative of the University of Gothenburg (GU)

Ragnar at the University of Gothenburg

The steering board will be responsible for arranging workshops and other activities, and will be involved in the admission of doctoral students to the school. It will also oversee the quality of the activities within the school. 

The coordinator

The coordinator manages the daily operations, the detailed planning of courses and events, internal and external communication. 

Supervisors' group

The research school also includes a supervisors' group which consists of all main supervisors and assistant supervisors. The group of supervisors meets once per semester and discusses the progression of the doctoral students and the research school's scientific development, including the content of courses, workshops, seminars and conferences. The scientific leader is the chairman of the supervisory board. 

Admission, employment, and supervision

Nine doctoral students will be admitted to and employed within the doctoral school. The aim is to spread them evenly between the three partner departments. Based on merits and research plan the applicants will be ranked and the top ranked will be offered a doctoral position. Each department is responsible for its own recruitment processes. However, for students admitted within the doctoral school, the ranking will be done in consultation with the steering board of the school. Each doctoral student will have an individual study plan (ISP) that will be revised each year. The ISPs are administered by the respective departments. The education of each doctoral student will follow the regulations and study plans at their university of employment – however, this will not interfere with the organization of the doctoral school or the range of courses offered within the doctoral school. There is a very high capacity for supervision at the  three partner universities. Each doctoral student will have his/her main supervisor at his/her home university, and we will aim to have the second supervisor at one of the other two partner universities in order to strengthen the cohesion within the doctoral school.

International reference group

The group provides crucial advice about the design and implementation of the programme throughout its existence. It also serves as a source of guest lecturers and of assisting supervisors in case the competencies at our departments need to be complemented. They will in addition be important for our aim to encourage students to spend some of their time as doctoral students abroad, partly to obtain novel impulses that will benefit their work on their dissertations and partly to prepare them for the post-doctoral part of their careers.

Members

Prof. Antti Kauppinen (Helsinki), Prof. Klemens Kappel (Copenhagen), Assoc. Prof. Justin Clarke-Doane (Columbia, New York), Prof. Thomas Schmidt (Humboldt, Berlin), Prof. Hilary Greaves (Oxford), Prof. Katie Steele (ANU, Canberra), Prof. Laura Valentini (Ludwig-Maximilian, München), Prof. Christian List (Ludwig-Maximilian, München), Prof. Richard Bradley (LSE), Prof. Bart Streumer (University of Groningen), Prof. Frank Hindriks (University of Groningen), Prof. Dana Nelkin (UC San Diego), Prof. David Shoemaker (Cornell), and Prof. Graham Oddie (Boulder).

National collaboration

An important hub for national and interdisciplinary collaboration will be the Institute for Futures Studies where both Bykvist and Tersman are employed part-time. The institute is an independent research foundation where researchers from the humanities and the social sciences conduct research on issues that are of importance for the future of humanity. It hosts a number of interdisciplinary projects that focus on norms research.
See further www.iffs.se/en/research/research-projects/

The doctoral school will arrange three types of activities: courses, workshops, and interdisciplinary colloquia. See calendar for venues, dates, and times.

Courses

Within the school we will offer several doctoral courses. Each course will formally be offered by one of the three partner departments, but in most courses researchers from all partner departments will participate in the teaching, and national and international guest lecturers will be invited when feasible. All of the courses will be open to application for external and international applicants. 

All students in the school will be expected to take an initial course titled “The nature of norms and normativity”. This course will cover fundamental philosophical issues regarding how normativity and norms are to be understood, but also connect these to perspectives on norms and normativity from the other philosophical areas described in the introduction. Researchers from all three partner universities will be involved in this course. 

The school will also offer at least one course from each of the perspectives on norms and normativity described above (in parenthesis we have indicated who will be responsible for coordinating the course themes respectively): 

• Metanormativity (Folke Tersman, UU and Ragnar Francén, GU) 
• Ethics (Krister Bykvist, SU, Erik Carlson, UU) 
• History of norms and normativity (Frans Svensson, GU) 
• Political Philosophy (Katharina Berndt Rasmussen, SU) 
• Decision and game theory (Orri Stefánsson, SU) 
• The philosophy of the social sciences and humanities (Erik Angner, SU) 
• Philosophical aesthetics (Elisabeth Schellekens Dammann, UU) 

Courses Fall 2023

Overview of course options in NoNo Fall 2023 (149 Kb)

Norms and normativity intro course (127 Kb)

Social ontology (61 Kb)

Progress in Philosophy (83 Kb)

Philosophical Perspectives (188 Kb)

Decision Theory (285 Kb)

Workshops

Regular workshops will be central to the school. During the first semester we will arrange a residential kick-off workshop with doctoral students, supervisors, and other researchers tied to the school. The doctoral students will present, and get input on, their thesis projects. After that, the school will arrange one workshop each semester, which the partner departments take turns hosting. At the workshops, doctoral students, supervisors and researchers affiliated with the school will present and discuss work in progress; doctoral students will act as commentators/opponents on each other’s papers. One workshop each year will be internal to participants from the school, and one will also invite national and international researchers as participants (e.g., researchers from the advisory board mentioned below). Furthermore, all PhD-students will regularly present papers at the regular seminars at their home department, and will be invited to present papers at the seminars of the partner departments. 

Colloquium

Each year we will also arrange an Interdisciplinary Colloquium at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm, with the aim of helping the students to prepare for, explore and benefit from interdisciplinary collaborations.

The research school is financed by Vetenskapsrådet, The Swedish Research Council.

Vetenskapsrådet, vr.se