Practical Normativity Research Articles

Moral Pluralism and Constitutional Horizontality

Abstract Despite the growing influence of constitutional rights over the regulation of horizontal (private) relations, many aspects of this trend remain under-theorized. This article criticizes four ideal-typical constitutional horizontality models for failing to accommodate moral reasons that must shape this regulatory practice: the state action model ignores basic consequentialist aspects of political morality; the direct application model ignores basic relational aspects of interpersonal morality; the strong indirect model recognizes both but subordinates the latter to the former; and the partitioned indirect model recognizes both but separates them too strongly. This article claims that a composite indirect model, which reflects basic features of the common law, can better realize constitutional rights through private law in conditions of moral pluralism: it can expose private law to constitutional rights-based and reform-oriented scrutiny without ignoring, eroding, or distorting the unique normativity of private relations and practices or their underlying values.

When reasons run out

Abstract Subjectivists about practical normativity hold that an agent's favouring and disfavouring attitudes give rise to practical reasons. On this view, an agent's normative reason to choose vanilla over chocolate ice cream ultimately turns on facts about what appeals to her rather than facts about what her options are like attitude-independently. Objectivists—who ground reasons in the attitude-independent features of the things we aim at—owe us an explanation of why it is rational to choose what we favour, if not simply because favouring is a source of reasons. My aim in this paper is to supply such a story. The proposal is roughly that when an agent cannot base her choices on her judgements about what she has most reason to do, structural rationality extends to her a license to choose something simply because she favours it, without imbuing favouring with the authority of a normative reason.

Forum on Heikki Patomäki’s World Statehood: The Future of World Politics

In this forum, six scholars discuss Heikki Patomäki’s book World Statehood: The Future of World Politics, published in 2023. The editor’s introduction situates it in the discursive contexts of cosmopolitanism, deep history and functional differentiation. Ian Crawford looks at the concept of world statehood from an astrobiologist’s point of view, putting the debate in the context of research on the possibility of life existing beyond Earth. Eva Erman notes that there are methodological issues that primarily derive from a missing distinction between theoretical and practical normativity in Patomäki’s thought. Oliver Kessler offers a critical perspective on underlying, and possibly unrealistic, assumptions about a universal translatability of specialized knowledges and vocabularies that he argues underlines Patomäki’s project. Jens Bartelson argues that the concept of world community has probably accumulated too much conceptual baggage to be useful in building world statehood. Mitja Sienknecht observes that the evolution of artificial intelligence is insufficiently addressed in World Statehood and probes possible implications in this respect. Heikki Patomäki then replies to these contributions.

The moral ought in conjectural history

ABSTRACT This article defends the importance of the idea of historical progress for constructivist justifications of moral normativity inspired by Kant’s analysis of practical reason. Focusing on some key methodological requirements that must be satisfied for the constructivist vindication of practical normativity to succeed, the article focuses on the concept of purposiveness as it develops within Kant’s moral and political philosophy. It concludes that without a critical notion of ‘purposiveness’ and related philosophical analysis of history, the constructivist rejection of scepticism is at risk of circularity.

Hinge normativity

The main purpose of this article is to anchor the basic principles of judgmental performances into reality, and thus, to capture the vertical axis of cognition. To this end, it is argued that the normative force of explicit, discursive self-knowledge is neither merely grounded in dialectical inescapability nor in default assumptions. The goal is to argue that the ultimate überhinge is so perfectly known that the questions of justification, truth-value and empirical cognoscibility lose any sense in regards to it. Hinge normativity, which can be reduced neither to epistemic (telic) normativity nor to practical normativity, emerges from this view. The shortcomings of neo-Kantian views of the sources of normativity in gnoseology are exposed and analysed.

In defence of object-given reasons

AbstractOne recurrent objection to the idea that the right kind of reasons for or against an attitude are object-given reasons for or against that attitude is that object-given reasons for or against belief and disbelief are incapable of explaining certain features of epistemic normativity. Prohibitive balancing, the behaviour of bare statistical evidence, information about future or easily available evidence, pragmatic and moral encroachment, as well as higher-order defeaters, are all said to be inexplicable in terms of those object-given reasons. In this paper, I provide a rebuttal to all these challenges by drawing attention to the object-given reasons for and against the third doxastic state, namely the suspension of judgement. First, I introduce an original picture of how suspension relates to belief and disbelief – as ways of being decided – which yields a novel weighing model of the corresponding reasons. Second, I demonstrate that this new take on doxastic deliberation can accommodate all five features of epistemic normativity. Finally, I extend the weighing model to cover practical deliberation and the suspension of intentions. The resulting theory provides an explanation of why epistemic and practical normativity differ in certain respects in terms of a significant difference between doxastic and conative suspension.

“Realizing I’m Sephardi”: Navigating Prayer and Curricular Discontinuities in Majority-Ashkenazic Day Schools

ABSTRACT Many American Jewish day schools, where most staff and students adhere to Ashkenazic traditions, perpetuate the normativity of Ashkenazic practice and culture, both reflecting and reinforcing the status of Sephardic communities as “minorities within a minority.” This article draws on Sephardic adults’ recollections of the “Ashkenormative” aspects of their K-12 experiences to explore whether and how discontinuities between the home and school religious practices of Sephardic students contribute to their sense of belonging in school within a broader Jewish American landscape. Findings demonstrate how seemingly insignificant classroom interactions and institutional policies can inform the attitudes of minority adolescents towards themselves, their families, and their communities; and how these attitudes continue to develop throughout late adolescence and into adulthood.

Reasons, Weight, and Hybrid Approaches to the Metaphysics of Practical Normativity

Reasons, Weight, and Hybrid Approaches to the Metaphysics of Practical Normativity

Free and responsible: Sexuality, pastoral, and the art of governance in Catholic Conjugal Centres (1953–1990)

This article deals with a socio-historical enigma: the articulation of family planning – through dedicated centres – and catholicism. How come self-identified catholics ended up defending contraception and decriminalisation of abortion while the Catholic Church kept reminding that sexuality should be conjugal and reproductive? The article examines the process of creating a discursive and practical normativity allowing the use of contraception and abortion through a catholic ‘tool’, that is, the pastoral power at a time of secularisation. Borrowing the concept developed by Michel Foucault enables highlighting the ‘catholic governmentality’ regarding contraception and abortion, namely, the ‘responsible-freedom’.

Legislating Taste

Abstract My aesthetic judgements seem to make claims on you. While some popular accounts of aesthetic normativity say that the force of these claims is third-personal, I argue that it is actually second-personal. This point may sound like a bland technicality, but it points to a novel idea about what aesthetic judgements ultimately are and what they do. It suggests, in particular, that aesthetic judgements are motions in the collective legislation of the nature of aesthetic activity. This conception is recommended by its ability to explain some important but otherwise recondite features of aesthetic practice and, more importantly, by allowing us to ground the normativity of aesthetic judgement in the familiar normativity of practice. It also offers a more systematic way of understanding the rivalry between the ideals of aesthetic universality and diversity.

What is enlightened agriculture? A multi-normative approach to the nature and values of food production systems

The sustainable development of farming is an agenda with strong normative undertones, yet beyond the call to combine enhanced agricultural output with better environmental outcomes, this normativity is rarely unpacked or analysed with respect to different worldviews and value systems. The normative practices approach is a values-explicit framework for analysing the normativity of social practices; here it is applied to agriculture to provide a critique of sustainability. This helps to clarify the nature of farming and the breadth of sometimes incommensurable visions for its sustainable intensification. It also leads to a values-explicit concept of “enlightened agriculture”, defined as models for agricultural systems that explicitly realise aesthetic, jural and moral benefits, possibly at some cost to economic productivity. While any implementation of this qualitative definition will be worldview-dependent, it appears that land-sparing approaches and the promotion of biodiversity per se are unlikely to qualify as enlightened farming, but farming with concern for the wellbeing of humans and non-humans probably does. The recognition that normative worldviews direct social practices implies that there will be profound diversity among visions of good farming, which technical and political proposals ought to account for. In the face of accelerating global change, this diversity may provide both resilience and fertile grounds for new context-sensitive and community-led initiatives.

Reconceiving Argument Schemes as Descriptive and Practically Normative

We propose a revised definition of “argument scheme” that focuses on describing argumentative performances and normative assessments that occur within an argumentative context, the social context in which the scheme arises. Our premise-and-conclusion structure identifies the typical instantiation of an argument in the argumentative context, and our critical framework describes a set of normative assessments available to participants in the context, what we call practically normative assessments. We distinguish this practical normativity from the rationally or universally normative assessment that might be imposed from outside the argumentative context. Thus, the practical norms represented in an argument scheme may still be subject to rational critique, and the scheme avoids the is/ought fallacy. We ground our theoretical discussion and observations in an empirical study of US district court opinions resolving legal questions about copyright fair use and the lawyers’ briefs that led to them, instantiating our definition of argument scheme in the “argument for classification by precedent.” Our definition addresses some criticisms the argument-scheme construct has received. For example, using our data, we show that a minimally well formed instance of this type of argument does not shift any conventional burden from the proponent of the argument to its skeptics. We also argue that these argument schemes need not be seen as dialogical.

A system of trust? Robert Brandom and Hegel’s phenomenology of spirit

In this paper, we discuss Robert B. Brandom?s reading of G. W. F. Hegel, especially his later work, A Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel?s Phenomenology, in order to tackle the question of ?trust? as the structure of recognition. First, we reconstruct Brandom?s reading of Hegel?s philosophy as a form of ?social recognitive pragmatics? with a ?historical recollective account of conceptual content?, by which he aims at a re-definition of practical normativity based upon trust. Then, we examine his notion of trust as the ground for a future, post-modern society. Finally, we point at some difficulties concerning Brandom?s notion of post-modern age and examine the concept of trust as key to the modern understanding of social bonds.

Diplomats on the Frontlines: Knowing and Ordering in Crisis

Summary How do diplomatic practices change under crisis conditions? To explore the possible effects of crisis on diplomatic standards of competence, the article zooms in on the modes of knowledge production of frontline diplomats in crisis. An illustrative case study of European Union (EU) diplomatic practice in Ukraine during the Euromaidan revolution reveals two different modes of knowledge production among members of the local EU diplomatic ‘community of practice’: a rule-following and reflexive mode. The article finds that the reflexive mode of knowledge production surfaces in times of crisis and reflects a heretofore under-acknowledged standard of excellence, the ‘ethics of care’ towards the host state’s citizens. Foregrounding the ‘ethics of care’ as a standard of competence sheds new light on diplomatic ethics and advances International Practice Theory’s (IPT) discussion about the normativity of practices and the contested nature of diplomatic competence.

Field Overlaps, Normativity, and the Contestation of Practices in China's Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a cornerstone of Xi Jinping's foreign policy. Chinese ministries, companies, and universities set up diplomatic networks, build roads and harbors, and facilitate scientific projects and educational programs to implement the BRI. Whereas some see the BRI as an integration project, others contend that it challenges the existing international order. We introduce the concept of field overlaps to study the normativity of international practices and argue that state and non-state actors contest international practices by drawing on competing normative inventories anchored in overlapping fields. We illustrate this argument by zooming in on China's infrastructural and educational practices. Their normativity comes to the fore in their ongoing contestation as they travel diplomatic, economic, security, and educational fields. Focusing on field overlaps provides a promising avenue for studying how actors stabilize, modify, or disrupt the normativity of international practices.

Hegel’s Concept of Right

This article examines the foundations for the legitimacy of law from the perspective of Hegel’s philosophy. In a first step, Kant’s justification of law is discussed, as Hegel takes the Kantian model as a central point of (critical) reference. Then, in the Section 2, I discuss Hegel’s reasons for rejecting the main strategies of justification of the legal order: natural law, contractarianism and legal positivism. This is further followed by a discussion of the meaning and scope of Hegel’s contextualism, according to which there can be no practical normativity without a certain historical embedding. Finally, I describe a more traditional met-aphysical reading (supported among others by Kevin Thompson) that I consider to be the correct solution, contrasting it with Honneth’s theory of recognition and Bran-dom’s pragmatism.

The normativity of educational psychology practice

This article addresses how the current mental health challenges among children and young people call for new educational psychology perspectives, and even more importantly, how the current challenges also call for normative reflections about the reasons behind the rising mental health issues. In the paper, it is claimed that many of these normative reflections tend to be overlooked in educational psychology practice. The paper further claims that when taking a closer look at educational psychology practice, focus has mainly been on how EPs most effectively can support schools in their everyday work by providing therapeutic interventions or by supporting different educational aims. However, less emphasis has been put on the why of educational psychology practice. Based on empirical evidence, it is shown how EPs often are faced with normative dilemmas. The article concludes by introducing a distinction between an affirmative and a non-affirmative approach to educational psychology practice.

Braucht die Moralphilosophie den Begriff der Verpflichtung? Über Anscombes Kritik an der Moralphilosophie der Moderne

Abstract. In her much debated article Modern Moral Philosophy Elizabeth Anscombe is known to argue that we are best advised to abandon the concept of moral obligation from moral discourse. This paper offers a step by step analysis of her argument against the concept of moral obligation by considering all of her relevant writings in moral philosophy and action theory. In doing so, it discusses her critical account of morality which turns out to be based on a non-homogeneous theory of practical normativity that has fundamental roots in Modern Moral Philosophy. Finally, it appears that Anscombe’s arguments against central concepts of modern moral philosophy show inner inconsistencies and weaknesses that give also reason to criticize her general philosophical position.

Surveillance under dispute: Conceptualising narrative legitimation politics

AbstractCurrent debates about surveillance demonstrate the complexity of political controversies whose uncertainty and moral ambiguities render normative consensus difficult to achieve. The question of how to study political controversies remains a challenge for IR scholars. Critical security studies scholars have begun to examine political controversies around surveillance by exploring changing security practices in the everyday. Yet, (de)legitimation practices have hitherto not been the focus of analysis. Following recent practice-oriented research, we develop a conceptual framework based on the notion of ‘narrative legitimation politics’. We first introduce the concept of ‘tests’ from Boltanski's pragmatic sociology to categorise the discursive context and different moral reference points (truth, reality, existence). Second, we combine pragmatic sociology with narrative analysis to enable the study of dominant justificatory practices. Third, we develop the framework through a practice-oriented exploration of the Snowden controversy with a focus on the US and Germany. We identify distinct justificatory practices in each test format linked to narrative devices (for example, plots, roles, metaphors) whose fluid, contested dynamics have the potential to effect change. The framework is particularly relevant for IR scholars interested in legitimacy issues, the normativity of practices, and the power of narratives.

How to park a car? Immobility and the temporal organization of parking practices

ABSTRACT The article explores the temporal organisation of social practices by using the example of car parking in cities. Parking is a dynamic practice dependent on materiality and oriented towards immobility. Drawing on the research on urban neighbourhoods in Poland, the article investigates coordination and synchronisation of people’s practices in temporally and spatially regulated situations. In so doing, it shows the emergence of normativity in car parking practices, which rely on ‘public familiarity’ and efficient use of urban spaces. The argumentation pulls together discussions about temporality, materiality, ordering and scalability of social practices. The article contributes to the understanding of cars in society by arguing for more attention to their immobility and consequences of parking for everyday life in cities. By looking at how cars are made stationary, both in action and with the assistance of temporal and material arrangements, the article engages the notion of infrastructuring to exemplify the practical normativity of temporal and spatial changes. The reinterpretation of infrastructuring helps to highlight its informal, situational and provisional aspects of infrastructure and practices that create and maintain it.