Conception Of Normativity Research Articles

Propriety, Facticity, Normativity

In Donner le temps II, Derrida argues that Heidegger is a thinker of ‘propriety’, which suggests that Heidegger is committed to a metaphysical strategy of assigning essential characteristics to entities and to being. This essay interrogates this claim from Derrida’s reading in Donner le temps II of Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s critique of Derrida on this issue, we will distinguish propriety from facticity. This investigation reveals that Heidegger conceives of Dasein as facing a range of possible commitments which can become determinate but are not determined. In turn, this conception of facticity provides the basis for Heidegger’s thinking of normativity, that is, a measure for success or failure which does not assign propriety to Dasein’s character, as Steven Crowell has argued. The essay concludes that Derrida’s critique of propriety and departure from phenomenology complicate the possibility of a viable deconstructive conception of normativity.

Are life forms real? Aristotelian naturalism and biological science

Aristotelian naturalism (AN) holds that the norms governing the human will are special instances of a broader type of normativity that is also found in other living things: natural goodness and natural defect. Both critics and defenders of AN have tended to focus on the thorny issues that are specific to human beings. But some philosophers claim that AN faces other difficulties, arguing that its broader conception of natural normativity is incompatible with current biological science. This paper has three aims. First, we consider a distinctive and nuanced critique of AN’s general understanding of natural normativity put forward by Tim Lewens. Second, after giving a defense of AN, we explore and evaluate Lewens’ proposed alternative view—Kantian projectivism about life forms. We present a problem for Kantian projectivism and suggest reasons for thinking that AN is, after all, the superior position. Finally, we clarify and explain how AN’s claims about life forms and our knowledge of them, relate to empirical observation and to contemporary biological science.

Spravedlnost dekonstrukce, dekonstrukce spravedlnosti. K Derridově koncepci spravedlnosti

The study is devoted to Derrida’s conception of normativity, focusing on his intervention in jurisprudence through reinterpretation of the concept of justice, which had a major influence on American critical legal studies theorists. A short introduction setting the topic into a broader context is followed by a section providing a brief overview of Derrida’s essential conceptual apparatus and the explanation of the method of deconstruction. In the next section, we identify two complementary ways in which Derrida understands the concept of justice: the first identifies justice directly with deconstruction, and thus centers normativity in Derrida’s own philosophical project; the second connects the concept of justice to the idea of infinity, and thus refers to Lévinas’ philosophy. In the conclusion of the text, we summarize the most significant responses and critical reactions to Derrida’s conception and consider whether it can provide guidance for judicial decision-making, as some theorists have suggested.

Countering postmodern genealogies: Brandom, Hegel and the logic of self-determination

In his recent A Spirit of Trust, Robert Brandom interprets Hegel as proposing a conception of normativity that overcomes the shortcomings of both modernity and its critics. Brandom?s Hegel asks for a ?hermeneutics of magnanimity?, in opposition to what Paul Ricoeur labelled the ?hermeneutics of suspicion?. According to Brandom, ?great unmaskers? of modern normativity like Nietzsche or Foucault make use of the delegitimizing force that characterizes genealogical explanation. Their suspicion is that what is thought to be normative is conditioned by contingencies that undermine that very normativity. In this paper, while raising objections against Brandom?s reading, I want to hold on to his idea that Hegelian philosophy counters those subversive postmodern genealogies. Instead of focusing, as Brandom does, on the end of the ?Spirit? chapter in Hegel?s Phenomenology, I draw on Hegel?s logic of self-determination. Contrary to the ?great unmaskers?, for Hegel, explanation of something through reference to some external or contingent factor is parasitic on explanation that explains something through itself.

Persistence of the ‘Codeless Myriad’: The Indian Contract Act and a Puzzle Surrounding Common Law Codification

Abstract The drafters of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 modelled the code after the will theory and deviated from the English law in a number of areas where it ran counter to the will theory. However, when one fast-forwards by a century, one finds that the Indian courts ended up construing the Act a way that it has come to be virtually indistinguishable from English contract law, warts and all. This article seeks to examine—with a study of provisions related to consideration, privity, and stipulated sums in the Indian Contract Act—the causes for dissonance between the case law and the code. It hypothesizes that the troubles for codification—which manifest in the trajectory taken by the Indian contract code—stem from certain underlying jurisprudential features of common law adjudication which neither the adherents nor the opponents of the codification project seem to have fully grasped. These features make adjudication track the antediluvian common law rather than the ‘code’ which it is supposed to supplant. At the heart of the common law is a form of normativity (normless normativity) that at odds with the conception of normativity presupposed by a code (normativity with rules).

Norms, Authority, and Practical Reason. On Raz’s Conception of Legal Normativity

The article analyses Raz’s conceptualisation of legal norms as “protected” reasons, which is based on the assertion of their exclusionary force. He takes that conceptualisation to depend on his “service conception” of authority, which poses a difficulty, however, for making sense of the autonomous nature allegedly exhibited by legal norms qua reasons for action. It will be shown that this difficulty ultimately explains Raz’s reluctance to endorse of properly positivist account of legal normativity.

Decision-Based Epistemology: sketching a systematic framework of Feyerabend\u2019s metaphilosophy

In this paper I defend the claim that Paul Feyerabend held a robust metaphilosophical position for most of his philosophical career. This position I call Decision-Based Epistemology and reconstruct it in terms of three key components: (1) a form of epistemic voluntarism concerning the justification of philosophical positions and (2) a behaviorist account of philosophical beliefs, which allows him (3) to cast normative arguments concerning philosophical beliefs in scientific methodology, such as realism, in terms of means-ends relations. I then introduce non-naturalist and naturalist variants of his conception of normativity, which I trace back to his mentors Viktor Kraft and Karl Popper, respectively. This distinction, introduced on the metaphilosophical level, can can be put to use to explain key changes in Feyerabend’s philosophical proposals, such as the viability of his methodological argument for realism. I conclude that this Decision-Based Epistemology should be further explored by historically embedding Feyerabend’s metaphilosophy in a voluntarist tradition of scientific philosophy.

Do Automated Vehicles Face Moral Dilemmas? A Plea for a Political Approach

How should automated vehicles (AVs) react in emergency circumstances? Most research projects and scientific literature deal with this question from a moral perspective. In particular, it is customary to treat emergencies involving AVs as instances of moral dilemmas and to use the trolley problem as a framework to address such alleged dilemmas. Some critics have pointed out some shortcomings of this strategy and have urged to focus on mundane traffic situations instead of trolley cases involving AVs. Besides, these authors rightly point out the political nature of the most interesting debates involving AVs. However, in our view, they do not offer an adequate account of the distinction between ethics and politics and still see their proposals as contributions to the ethics of AVs. We argue that many of the interesting questions about how AVs should behave, both in emergency and other situations, are of political, and not moral, nature. This view is based on a conception of politics and political normativity that we have developed elsewhere and that we call “political minimalism.” Additionally, we show that this proposed perspective has significant consequences for the design, management, and regulation of transport systems.

The Body of Spirit: Hegel's Concept of Flesh and its Normative Implications

AbstractThis paper attempts to show that an expansive normative vision can be drawn from Hegel's texts, one whose scope significantly exceeds the anthropocentric model presented in the ‘objective spirit’ parts of his system. This expansion of normativity is linked to an expansive vision of relationality underpinning Hegel's model of ‘concrete freedom’. In order to put into sharper relief the links between expansive relationality and normativity, the late thinking of Maurice Merleau-Ponty is mobilized as a heuristic contrasting point. In the ‘subjective spirit’ sections of the Encyclopaedia are found insights that anticipate key features of Merleau-Ponty's notion of ‘flesh’. Locating these insights allows us to detect the underlying thread this paper seeks to mine. Hegel's own ‘theory of flesh’ culminates in the notion of ‘constitutive attachments’, the idea that the content of subjectivity is made up of all the bonds linking the human subject to her surrounding worlds and objects. Since freedom for Hegel is ‘being with’, and since normative demands arise from the different ways in which freedom is concretely realized, it would seem that Hegel's relational conception of subjectivity should lead to an equally expansive conception of normativity. Against the objection that Hegel denied any normative status to non-human beings, the paper points to passages in his work, notably his account of aesthetic judgement and natural beauty, which appear to suggest the opposite.

Philosophising on international law: Jovanović’s conception of normativity and rationality

In his book The Philosophy of International Law, Jovanovic advances the view that an inquiry into the reasons regarding why states would consider international norms as binding norms would be part of a sociology of law, and we can infer that, for him, it is a part of an inquiry into an empirical order. I advance two criticisms of one aspect of Jovanovic’s conclusion on empiricism: a) the idea that there is a plurality of reasons for actions that constitute a wide spectrum, from self-interested reasons to moral reasons and, b) that we can understand the plurality of reasons for actions of either states or citizens through empirical research. I argue that these positions reflect a particular and, in my view, problematic view of agency.

Legal rights for animals: aspiration or logical necessity?

Whereas regulation relating to minimum standards of animal welfare is increasingly uncontroversial in contemporary popular discourse, the same cannot be said of viewing animals as legal persons possessing legally enforceable rights in and of themselves. The purpose of this article will be to explore this reticence and ask whether the continued anthropocentricity of legally enforceable rights is compatible with the very concept of law itself. The article will draw heavily on the moral writing of Alan Gewirth, engaging with his justification for why human beings themselves can make philosophically valid claims to be rightsholders. Taking Gewirthian ethical rationalism as providing a universally applicable hypothetical imperative which binds all agents to comply with its requirements, the article will move on to discuss the implications of the theory on our understanding of legal normativity. If we accept that the purpose of law is to guide action, and that legal normativity therefore operates at the level of practical rationality, the Gewirthian project necessarily limits the content of law to those norms which are compliant with the moral underpinning of all normative reasons for action. A necessary connection between law and morality can therefore be established which requires equal respect for all agents. By creating this necessary connection, it is possible to move beyond an anthropocentric conception of legal normativity to one that necessarily must instead respect the basic rights possessed by all agents – regardless of species. Legal rights for animals that are capable of acting within Gewirth's conception of agency must therefore be seen not to be a mere aspiration for a well-meaning society, but a logical necessity within any legal system.

Commitment, Norm-Governedness and Guidance

A number of philosophers have argued that there is a basic problem in the no-guidance argument against content normativism. The problem is that the argument restricts the essential normativity of intentional states to the formation of these states being guided by certain norms. But it is suggested that the essential norm-governedness of intentional states can be equally plausibly construed as the assessability of these states by norms, which does not imply complying with them. Although I concur with the problem diagnosed in the no-guidance argument, I take issue with the alternative conception of normativity which is put forward. In its stead, I argue that considering intentional states as commitments whose discharging requires complying with certain norms is preferable because it both respects the insight provided while remaining unscathed by the problems besetting this conception of normativity.

Rationality, autonomy, and obedience to linguistic norms

Many philosophers working today on the normativity of language have concluded that linguistic activity is not a matter of rule following. These conversations have been framed by a conception of linguistic normativity with roots in Wittgenstein and Kripke. In this paper I use conceptual resources developed by the classical American pragmatists and their descendants to argue that punctate linguistic acts are governed by rules in a sense that has been neglected in the recent literature on the normativity of language. In the course of arguing for this conclusion I defend a Kantian conception of rationality as rule-obeying activity, and I argue that this conception is compatible with a naturalistic understanding of ourselves as rational beings governed by rules of thought and action.

Normatividad y deliberación práctica en John Dewey: elementos para una lectura contemporánea

The aim of this paper is to explore John Dewey’s solution of the problem of normativity that has confronted skeptics and dogmatists for centuries. Dewey’s main strategy is to elaborate a hypothesis to explain how the de jure or normative principles have an anchor and a starting point in practical, de facto activity. In order to reconstruct Dewey’s conception of normativity, and taking into account the misinterpretations it has received, we will first analyze the nature of the problem -a problem that, from Dewey’s point of view, is a political one. Second, we will show how our author’s conception of rationality diverges from the dominant conception, which making reference to the still prevalent distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification, takes justification as its basic component. Third, after emphasizing the centrality of the practical problem-solving process as the core of rationality in Dewey’s thought, we will analyze his conception of practical deliberation, which is thus seen as the origin of all normativity.

Empirical moral rationalism and the social constitution of normativity

Moral rationalism has long been an attractive position within moral philosophy. However, among empirical-minded philosophers, it is widely dismissed as scientifically untenable. In this essay, I argue that moral rationalism’s lack of uptake in the empirical domain is due to the widespread supposition that moral rationalists must hold that moral judgments and actions are produced by rational capacities. But this construal is mistaken: moral rationalism’s primary concern is not with the relationship between moral judgments and rational capacities per se, but rather with developing a conception objectivity normativity that avoids Platonism. In light of this, I develop an alternative approach to translating moral rationalism into the empirical domain that builds on the common rationalist view that normative requirements are explained by the relationship between agents and the social structures and practices in which they are embedded. I propose that this social conception of normativity can be translated into a scientific framework by interpreting it as a claim about the importance of constraint-based explanation when accounting for norm-governed behavior. In order to develop this point more concretely and show that it is empirically tractable, I turn to research on macaque social organization that highlights the ways in which (proto)normative standards are generated by empirically observable social structures. The insights garnered from the macaque case allow me to then locate moral rationalism’s core claims about the relationship between morality and the standards of practical rationality within an empirically plausible framework.

O espírito objetivo segundo Husserl

Abstract The article follows Husserl’s theses on the «objective spirit», taking as a guide the conception of social normativity (based on a linguistic model) proposed by V. Descombes. The aim is to show that, in his analyses of social ontology, Husserl reveals as a basis of sociality the structures of reciprocity to which individual acts must be subjected. These structures function in different levels of complexity: communicative relations, practical familiar relations and impersonal relations inside a people.

El ideal de autonomía moral

En este ensayo planteo algunos elementos constitutivos del ideal de autonomia moral, que resulta un presupuesto central de las practicas sociales centradas en la imputacion normativa, fundamentalmente la moral y el derecho. Parto de una concepcion constructivista de la normatividad, tomando como elemento esencial y no reductible a las razones, y me centro en los rasgos conceptuales que caracterizan a las razones morales dentro del dominio normativo. Posteriormente, desarrollo una idea de la autonomia moral basada en la auto-constitucion que incluye tres propiedades fundamentales: la posibilidad de responder a razones fundadas en expectativas sociales compartidas; la responsabilidad por cierto ambito de acciones, segun el conjunto de razones de que dispone el sujeto y hasta el punto en que pueda ampliarlas, y la necesidad de conservar la autonomia como finalidad que unifica el conjunto de acciones autonomas de los agentes morales.

Helpfulness as Journalism's Normative Anchor

This article addresses two blind spots related to normativity in journalism studies. First, the digital journalism literature has led the field too far away from what journalism does for people and offers a shallowly-theorized and technocentric conception of journalism’s social objectives. Second, the emphasis on reporting and the journalism/democracy framework has privileged particular forms of journalism over others and led to a thin conception of journalistic normativity. While the journalism/democracy framework should not be abandoned, it should be resituated as part of a more expansive treatment of journalistic normativity. These blind spots mean that normativity in journalism studies must be both re-centered and broadened. To this end, this article argues that helpfulness ought to be considered journalism’s “normative anchor”—that is, the foundation upon which journalistic normativity rests. It follows, then, that the fundamental objective of journalism is to be helpful. Understanding helpfulness as journalism’s normative anchor satisfies the demand of re-centering journalism’s public goods while also satisfying the demand of broadening the horizons of journalism studies with regard to the range of journalistic specialisms.

Semantic mentalism, intesubjecitivity and metaphysics of normativity

The subject of this paper is Kripkenstein's critique of mentalistic explanation of linguistic normativity, as well as his intersubjective conception of normativity. The author argues against dominant intepretation of Kripkenstein's view on meaning as social metaphysics of normativity, the theory which reduces language rules to community consensus. It is pointed out that Kripkenstein's rejection of mentalistic thesis that meaning is some kind of mental state in the head of a speaker results in anti-reductionistic character of intersubjective conception of normativity, which describes how we speak about difference between correct and incorrect uses of language in everyday life, but does not say what that difference is, or what it consists of. Hence, it is concluded that, according to Kripkenstein, community is the only normative tribunal in matters of language, but it's not the supreme judge because, rather than passing irrevocable judgments on correctness of individual speech acts, community actually constitutes a framework that enables the normative disputes between its members.

Expressivism and realist explanations

It is often claimed that there is an explanatory divide between an expressivist account of normative discourse and a realist conception of normativity: more precisely, that expressivism and realism offer conflicting explanations of (1) the metaphysical structure of the normative realm, (2) the connection between normative judgment and motivation, (3) our normative beliefs and any convergence thereof, or (4) the content of normative thoughts and claims. In this paper I argue that there need be no such explanatory conflict. Given a minimalist approach to the relevant metaphysical and semantic notions, expressivism is compatible with any explanation that would be acceptable as a general criterion for realism.