Norm (philosophy)

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Norms are concepts (sentences) of practical import, oriented to affecting an action, rather than conceptual abstractions that describe, explain, and express. Normative sentences imply "ought-to" types of statements and assertions, in distinction to sentences that provide "is" types of statements and assertions. Common normative sentences include commands, permissions, and prohibitions; common normative abstract concepts include sincerity, justification, and honesty. A popular account of norms describes them as reasons to take action, to believe, and to feel.

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Types of norms

Orders and permissions express norms. Such norm sentences do not describe how the world is, they rather prescribe how the world should be. Imperative sentences are the most obvious way to express norms, but declarative sentences also may be norms, as is the case with laws or 'principles'. Generally, whether an expression is a norm depends on what the sentence intends to assert. For instance, a sentence of the form "All Ravens are Black" could on one account be taken as descriptive, in which case an instance of a white raven would contradict it, or alternatively "All Ravens are Black" could be interpreted as a norm, in which case it stands as a principle and definition, so 'a white raven' would then not be a raven.

Those norms purporting to create obligations (or duties) and permissions are called deontic norms (see also deontic logic). The concept of deontic norm is already an extension of a previous concept of norm, which would only include imperatives, that is, norms purporting to create duties. The understanding that permissions are norms in the same way was an important step in ethics and philosophy of law.

A flowchart with examples of constitutive and deontic norms Constitutive Norms vs. Deontic Norms.png
A flowchart with examples of constitutive and deontic norms

In addition to deontic norms, many other varieties have been identified. [1] [2] For instance, some constitutions establish the national anthem. These norms do not directly create any duty or permission. They create a "national symbol". Other norms create nations themselves or political and administrative regions within a nation. The action orientation of such norms is less obvious than in the case of a command or permission, but is essential for understanding the relevance of issuing such norms: When a folk song becomes a "national anthem" the meaning of singing one and the same song changes; likewise, when a piece of land becomes an administrative region, this has legal consequences for many activities taking place on that territory; and without these consequences concerning action, the norms would be irrelevant. A more obviously action-oriented variety of such constitutive norms (as opposed to deontic or regulatory norms) establishes social institutions which give rise to new, previously nonexistent types of actions or activities (a standard example is the institution of marriage without which "getting married" would not be a feasible action; another is the rules constituting a game: without the norms of soccer, there would not exist such an action as executing an indirect free kick).

Any convention can create a norm, although the relation between both is not settled.[ citation needed ]

There is a significant discussion about (legal) norms that give someone the power to create other norms. They are called power-conferring norms or norms of competence. Some authors argue that they are still deontic norms, while others argue for a close connection between them and institutional facts (see Raz 1975, Ruiter 1993).

Linguistic conventions, for example, the convention in English that "cat" means cat or the convention in Portuguese that "gato" means cat, are among the most important norms.[ citation needed ]

Games completely depend on norms. The fundamental norm of many games is the norm establishing who wins and loses. In other games, it is the norm establishing how to score points.

Norms can be defined as rules that regulate one's social life within a particular group. Within such, there can be explicit and implicit laws that help enforce norms. For example, explicit laws bring reward and punishment, such as cheating. Implicit cultural conventions include blocking the top of the stairs on a subway, doing your makeup on the train, or even walking slowly in the city. Norms can be described as injunctive social norms or descriptive social norms. Injunctive social norms are norms agreed upon mental representation of what a group of people think. An example of such can include being kind to your parents, or giving up the seat for a pregnant lady on the bus. These all showcase what some people feel should be done. Descriptive social norms on the other hand are norms agreed upon mental representations of what a group of people actually think or feel. An example of such can include drinking in public. Although we know it should not take place, on the back of our mind we know it happens. Another example can even include jaywalking. This shows that there are actual laws of what shouldn’t occur, yet it still does. In society, there are many norms of reciprocity: door in the face, foot in the door, etc. One of the most common uses by people is door in the face. As human beings, we want to be liked by others and feel wanted. It is simply just human nature. This strategy uses reciprocating concessions to influence one's behavior. This norm of reciprocity includes asking someone for something big, which we know the likelihood of the answer will be no. You would then ask them for something smaller and they would be more likely to say yes. For example, if I ask a group of people for 100$, they are not likely to give it to me. However, if I turn around again and ask for 5$, they are more likely to give it to me. [3] <Bavel, Jay. “Us Vs. Then.” Introduction to Psychology Lecture. 12 April 2023. > Many psychologists have done experiments to show the power of social learning and the influence it has on social norms to behavior. In 1961, Bandura studied to see if social behaviors can be gained from observation and imitation. 36 boys and 36 girls studied at the Stanford University Nursing School. Before the experiment was done, researchers wanted to see how aggressive they were on average on a scale of 1 to 5. Then, the overall 72 students were assigned to one of three groups. One group was assigned with the control group- no model, one group was assigned with an aggressive role model, and the other group was assigned with a non-aggressive role model. They then viewed a female model and a male model of each. The children were then placed independently into the room and were given aggressive/non-aggressive toys. The non-aggressive toys included a tea set, crayons, and three bears. The aggressive toys included a peg board, a dart gun, and a 3 foot bobo doll. The child was in the room for twenty minutes and was observed through a one way mirror. Observations were made every 5 seconds during the duration of 20 minutes. The researchers had found that children who had seen the aggressive model had aggressive responses compared to people that were in the non-aggression or control group. The boys were also more likely to imitate the behavior of the same sex models rather than the girls showing more violent behavior. The girls also acted more violently to the male models. These findings relate to norms as they show the influence of social norms on behavior. The young children were more likely to observe and copy the norms and be influenced by the behavior of others, especially those they may see as “older” or a “role model.” Source: </“Mcleod, Saul. “Bobo Doll Experiment: Description, Methodology, Results, & Evaluation.” Simply Psychology, 20 Apr. 2023, https://www.simplypsychology.org/bob o-doll.html.>

Major characteristics

One major characteristic of norms is that, unlike propositions, they are not descriptively true or false, since norms do not purport to describe anything, but to prescribe, create or change something. Deontologists would denote them to be "prescriptively true" or false. Whereas the truth of a descriptive statement is purportedly based on its correspondence to reality, some philosophers, beginning with Aristotle, assert that the (prescriptive) truth of a prescriptive statement is based on its correspondence to right desire. Other philosophers maintain that norms are ultimately neither true or false, but only successful or unsuccessful (valid or invalid), as their propositional content obtains or not (see also John Searle and speech act).

There is an important difference between norms and normative propositions, although they are often expressed by identical sentences. "You may go out" usually expresses a norm if it is uttered by the teacher to one of the students, but it usually expresses a normative proposition if it is uttered to one of the students by one of his or her classmates. Some ethical theories reject that there can be normative propositions, but these are accepted by cognitivism. One can also think of propositional norms; assertions and questions arguably express propositional norms (they set a proposition as asserted or questioned).

Another purported feature of norms, it is often argued, is that they never regard only natural properties or entities. Norms always bring something artificial, conventional, institutional or "unworldly". This might be related to Hume's assertion that it is not possible to derive ought from is and to G.E. Moore's claim that there is a naturalistic fallacy when one tries to analyse "good" and "bad" in terms of a natural concept. In aesthetics, it has also been argued that it is impossible to derive an aesthetical predicate from a non-aesthetical one. The acceptability of non-natural properties, however, is strongly debated in present-day philosophy. Some authors deny their existence, some others try to reduce them to natural ones, on which the former supervene.

Other thinkers (Adler, 1986) assert that norms can be natural in a different sense than that of "corresponding to something proceeding from the object of the prescription as a strictly internal source of action". Rather, those who assert the existence of natural prescriptions say norms can suit a natural need on the part of the prescribed entity. More to the point, however, is the putting forward of the notion that just as descriptive statements being considered true are conditioned upon certain self-evident descriptive truths suiting the nature of reality (such as: it is impossible for the same thing to be and not be at the same time and in the same manner), a prescriptive truth can suit the nature of the will through the authority of it being based upon self-evident prescriptive truths (such as: one ought to desire what is really good for one and nothing else).

Recent works maintain that normativity has an important role in several different philosophical subjects, not only in ethics and philosophy of law (see Dancy, 2000).

See also

Further reading

Related Research Articles

In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics and applied ethics.

Non-cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences do not express propositions and thus cannot be true or false. A noncognitivist denies the cognitivist claim that "moral judgments are capable of being objectively true, because they describe some feature of the world". If moral statements cannot be true, and if one cannot know something that is not true, noncognitivism implies that moral knowledge is impossible.

In philosophical ethics, the naturalistic fallacy is the claim that any reductive explanation of good, in terms of natural properties such as pleasant or desirable, is false. The term was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book Principia Ethica.

Normative ethics is the study of ethical behaviour and is the branch of philosophical ethics that investigates the questions that arise regarding how one ought to act, in a moral sense.

Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. There are many different forms of relativism, with a great deal of variation in scope and differing degrees of controversy among them. Moral relativism encompasses the differences in moral judgments among people and cultures. Epistemic relativism holds that there are no absolute principles regarding normative belief, justification, or rationality, and that there are only relative ones. Alethic relativism is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture. Some forms of relativism also bear a resemblance to philosophical skepticism. Descriptive relativism seeks to describe the differences among cultures and people without evaluation, while normative relativism evaluates the word truthfulness of views within a given framework.

Moral relativism or ethical relativism is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. An advocate of such ideas is often referred to as a relativist for short.

Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Hence, it is colloquially known as the hurrah/boo theory. Influenced by the growth of analytic philosophy and logical positivism in the 20th century, the theory was stated vividly by A. J. Ayer in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, but its development owes more to C. L. Stevenson.

Understood in a narrow sense, philosophical logic is the area of logic that studies the application of logical methods to philosophical problems, often in the form of extended logical systems like modal logic. Some theorists conceive philosophical logic in a wider sense as the study of the scope and nature of logic in general. In this sense, philosophical logic can be seen as identical to the philosophy of logic, which includes additional topics like how to define logic or a discussion of the fundamental concepts of logic. The current article treats philosophical logic in the narrow sense, in which it forms one field of inquiry within the philosophy of logic.

Cognitivism is the meta-ethical view that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be true or false, which noncognitivists deny. Cognitivism is so broad a thesis that it encompasses moral realism, ethical subjectivism, and error theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Is–ought problem</span> Philosophical problem articulated by David Hume

The is–ought problem, as articulated by the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume, arises when one makes claims about what ought to be that are based solely on statements about what is. Hume found that there seems to be a significant difference between descriptive or positive statements and prescriptive or normative statements, and that it is not obvious how one can coherently move from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones. Hume's law or Hume's guillotine is the thesis that, if a reasoner only has access to non-moral and non-evaluative factual premises, the reasoner cannot logically infer the truth of moral statements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Normativity</span> Relating to an evaluative standard

Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A norm in this sense means a standard for evaluating or making judgments about behavior or outcomes. "Normative" is sometimes also used, somewhat confusingly, to mean relating to a descriptive standard: doing what is normally done or what most others are expected to do in practice. In this sense a norm is not evaluative, a basis for judging behavior or outcomes; it is simply a fact or observation about behavior or outcomes, without judgment. Many researchers in science, law, and philosophy try to restrict the use of the term "normative" to the evaluative sense and refer to the description of behavior and outcomes as positive, descriptive, predictive, or empirical.

Ethical subjectivism or moral non-objectivism is the meta-ethical view which claims that:

  1. Ethical sentences express propositions.
  2. Some such propositions are true.
  3. The truth or falsity of such propositions is ineliminably dependent on the attitudes of people.

In philosophy and logic, a deflationary theory of truth is one of a family of theories that all have in common the claim that assertions of predicate truth of a statement do not attribute a property called "truth" to such a statement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Material conditional</span> Logical connective

The material conditional is an operation commonly used in logic. When the conditional symbol is interpreted as material implication, a formula is true unless is true and is false. Material implication can also be characterized inferentially by modus ponens, modus tollens, conditional proof, and classical reductio ad absurdum.

Deontic logic is the field of philosophical logic that is concerned with obligation, permission, and related concepts. Alternatively, a deontic logic is a formal system that attempts to capture the essential logical features of these concepts. It can be used to formalize imperative logic, or directive modality in natural languages. Typically, a deontic logic uses OA to mean it is obligatory that A, and PA to mean it is permitted that A, which is defined as .

Subjunctive possibility is a form of modality studied in modal logic. Subjunctive possibilities are the sorts of possibilities considered when conceiving counterfactual situations; subjunctive modalities are modalities that bear on whether a statement might have been or could be true—such as might, could, must, possibly, necessarily, contingently, essentially, accidentally, and so on. Subjunctive possibilities include logical possibility, metaphysical possibility, nomological possibility, and temporal possibility.

In meta-ethics, expressivism is a theory about the meaning of moral language. According to expressivism, sentences that employ moral terms – for example, "It is wrong to torture an innocent human being" – are not descriptive or fact-stating; moral terms such as "wrong", "good", or "just" do not refer to real, in-the-world properties. The primary function of moral sentences, according to expressivism, is not to assert any matter of fact, but rather to express an evaluative attitude toward an object of evaluation. Because the function of moral language is non-descriptive, moral sentences do not have any truth conditions. Hence, expressivists either do not allow that moral sentences have truth value, or rely on a notion of truth that does not appeal to any descriptive truth conditions being met for moral sentences.

According to the redundancy theory of truth, asserting that a statement is true is completely equivalent to asserting the statement itself. For example, asserting the sentence "'Snow is white' is true" is equivalent to asserting the sentence "Snow is white". The philosophical redundancy theory of truth is a deflationary theory of truth.

A modal connective is a logical connective for modal logic. It is an operator which forms propositions from propositions. In general, a modal operator has the "formal" property of being non-truth-functional in the following sense: The truth-value of composite formulae sometimes depend on factors other than the actual truth-value of their components. In the case of alethic modal logic, a modal operator can be said to be truth-functional in another sense, namely, that of being sensitive only to the distribution of truth-values across possible worlds, actual or not. Finally, a modal operator is "intuitively" characterized by expressing a modal attitude about the proposition to which the operator is applied. See also Garson, James, "Modal Logic", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/logic-modal/>

A truth-bearer is an entity that is said to be either true or false and nothing else. The thesis that some things are true while others are false has led to different theories about the nature of these entities. Since there is divergence of opinion on the matter, the term truth-bearer is used to be neutral among the various theories. Truth-bearer candidates include propositions, sentences, sentence-tokens, statements, beliefs, thoughts, intuitions, utterances, and judgements but different authors exclude one or more of these, deny their existence, argue that they are true only in a derivative sense, assert or assume that the terms are synonymous, or seek to avoid addressing their distinction or do not clarify it.

References

  1. ↑ "1.3. Social Norms: Folkways, Mores, Taboo, and Laws". openoregon.pressbooks.pub. Retrieved 2023-04-01.
  2. ↑ "International Relations Theory". e-ir.info. Retrieved 2023-04-01.
  3. ↑ <ref>
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