The Unity of Normativity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Wedgwood
Keyword(s):  
Normative Concept ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
Conceptual Role ◽  
In Virtue Of

What is normativity? It is argued here that normativity is best understood as a property of certain concepts: normative thoughts are those involving these normative concepts; normative statements are statements that express normative thoughts; and normative facts are the facts (if such there be) that make such normative thoughts true. Many philosophers propose that there is a single basic normative concept—perhaps the concept of a reason for an action or attitude—in terms of which all other normative concepts can be defined. It is argued here that this proposal faces grave difficulties. According to a better proposal, what these normative concepts have in common is that they have a distinctive sort of conceptual role—a reasoning-guiding conceptual role. This proposal is illustrated by a number of examples: different normative concepts differ from each other in virtue of their having different conceptual roles of this reasoning-guiding kind.

The Value of Rationality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Wedgwood
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Substantive Theory ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Normative Concepts

Rationality is a central concept for epistemology, ethics, and the study of practical reason. But what sort of concept is it? It is argued here that—contrary to objections that have recently been raised—rationality is a normative concept. In general, normative concepts cannot be explained in terms of the concepts expressed by ‘reasons’ or ‘ought’. Instead, normative concepts are best understood in terms of values. Thus, for a mental state or a process of reasoning to be rational is for it to be in a certain way good. Specifically, rationality is a virtue, while irrationality is a vice. What rationality requires of you at a time is whatever is necessary for your thinking at that time to be as rational as possible; this makes ‘rationally required’ equivalent to a kind of ‘ought’. Moreover, rationality is an “internalist” normative concept: what it is rational for you to think at a time depends purely on what is in your mind at that time. Nonetheless, rationality has an external goal—namely, getting things right in your thinking, or thinking correctly. The connection between rationality and correctness is probabilistic: if your thinking is irrational, that is bad news about your thinking’s degree of correctness; and the more irrational your thinking is, the worse the news is about your thinking’s degree of correctness. This account of the concept of rationality indicates how we should set about giving a substantive theory of what it is for beliefs and choices to be rational.

Evaluation Turned on Itself

2021 ◽  
pp. 207-232
Author(s):  
Tristram McPherson ◽  
David Plunkett
Keyword(s):  
Normative Concept ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
The Way

This chapter clarifies and addresses a deep challenge to the conceptual ethics of normativity. The challenge arises from the fact that we need to use some of our own normative concepts in order to evaluate our normative concepts. This might seem objectionably circular, akin to trying to verify the accuracy of a ruler by checking it against itself. We dub this the vindicatory circularity challenge. If the challenge cannot be met, it would suggest that all normative inquiry (not just the conceptual ethics of normativity) rests on worryingly arbitrary foundations. We defend a way of answering the challenge that adapts anti-skeptical resources from epistemology. Along the way, we reject several alternative replies to the challenge. These include dismissing the challenge because it cannot be formulated with our concepts, answering it by appeal to a distinctive normative concept, and answers that appeal to certain metaphysical or metasemantic resources.

Basic Perceptual Reasons

Reasons First ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 51-76
Author(s):  
Mark Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Epistemology Of Perception

Chapter 3 takes up the first obstacle to the idea that reasons come first among normative concepts in epistemology: the problem of unjustified belief. It does so by introducing the issues that arise in the epistemology of perception when we ask what reason or evidence you acquire for ordinary conclusions about the external world in virtue of having perceptual experiences. The resulting space of possible answers is explored, including the natural ways in which it leads to skepticism, rationalism, coherentism, dogmatism, pure externalism, and disjunctivism. These views are contrasted with answers that allow reasons to be false, and by doing so avoid all of the distinctive commitments of each of these alternatives.

scholarly journals What Makes Normative Concepts Normative

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-51
Author(s):  
Shawn Hernandez ◽  
N. G. Laskowski ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Normative Concepts ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Normative Role ◽  
The Way

When asked which of our concepts are normative concepts, metaethicists would be quick to list such concepts as good, ought, and reason. When asked why such concepts belong on the list, metaethicists would be much slower to respond. Eklund (2017) is a notable exception. He argues by elimination for “the Normative Role view” that normative concepts are normative in virtue of having a “normative role” or being “used normatively” (2017, p. 79). One view that Eklund aims to eliminate is “the Metaphysical view” that normative concepts are normative in virtue of referring to normative properties (2017, p. 71).2 In addition to arguing that Eklund’s objection looks doubtful by its own lights, we argue that there are several plausible versions of the Metaphysical view that Eklund doesn’t eliminate, defending various claims about normative concepts and their relationships to deliberation, competence, reference, and possession along the way.

Expressivism and Cognitive Propositions

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-387
Author(s):  
JAMES L. D. BROWN
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
General Constraint ◽  
Conceptual Role ◽  
In Virtue Of

AbstractExpressivists about normative thought and discourse traditionally deny that there are nondeflationary normative propositions. However, it has recently been suggested that expressivists might avoid a number of problems by providing a theory of normative propositions compatible with expressivism. This paper explores the prospects for developing an expressivist theory of propositions within the framework of cognitive act theories of propositions. First, I argue that the only extant expressivist theory of cognitive propositions—Michael Ridge's ‘ecumenical expressivist’ theory—fails to explain identity conditions for normative propositions. Second, I argue that this failure motivates a general constraint—the ‘unity requirement’—that any expressivist theory of propositions must provide a unified nonrepresentational explanation of that in virtue of which propositional attitudes have the content that they have. Third, I argue that conceptual role accounts of content provide a promising framework in which to develop an expressivist theory of cognitive propositions.

The normativity of democracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Frega
Keyword(s):  
Normative Concept ◽  
Normative Function ◽  
Norm Compliance ◽  
Political Concept ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
Patterns Of Interaction ◽  
Normative Content

The aim of this paper is to advance our understanding of the normative grammar of the concept of democracy by distinguishing two levels at which a political concept may play a normative function, and proceeds by analysing the concept of democracy at these two levels. It distinguishes in particular between normativity as ‘norm-compliance’ and normativity as ‘paradigmatic’ and contends that the concept of democracy has a normative content that extends over both levels. A model of democracy consistent with this approach is then outlined based on a sociological account of democratic patterns of interaction. The structure of the paper is as follows. In sections one and two, I distinguish two meanings of normativity and introduce the concept of ‘paradigm normativity'. In section three, I provide examples of rival ‘paradigm normative' concepts. In section four, I provide an account of democracy as a ‘paradigm normative' concept and in sections five and six, I present its two most important theoretical features.

Radical Interpretation and the Referential Stability of Wrongness

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-93
Author(s):  
J. Robert G. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Radical Interpretation ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
First Order ◽  
Moral Subject ◽  
Twin Earth ◽  
Conceptual Role ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Twin Earth

This chapter is one of three that draws out the consequences of Radical Interpretation for how concepts represent the world. This chapter introduces a famous ‘moral twin earth’ puzzle about the normative concept wrongness. It appears to have a distinctive referential stability: individuals or whole communities can be very mistaken in what they think makes an act morally right or wrong, but somehow they remain locked onto the moral subject matter. This chapter derives this stability as a prediction of Radical Interpretation. Radical Interpretation predicts the result when combined with first-order normative premises and premises about the conceptual role of the concept of wrongness.

Some Metaphilosophical Issues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matti Eklund
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Quantifier Variance ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Conceptual Engineering ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
Applied Philosophy

This chapter discusses three metaphilosophical issues. First, the themes that have been the focus of the discussion relate to the trend of considering conceptual engineering, or conceptual ethics: how can we improve on the concepts we currently have? In fact, consideration of thin normative concepts presents distinctive theoretical questions: what do or can we mean when we ask whether some possible thin normative concept is better than another? Second, much contemporary metaethics focuses on accounting for our actual normative terms and concepts and is a kind of applied philosophy of language: but what is the broader philosophical upshot of such discussions? Third, the book’s main themes parallel the discussion of quantifier variance in metaontology. The similarities between these parallels are explored.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Wedgwood
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Main Topic ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Normative Language ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
Linguistic Intuitions

This chapter introduces the book’s central themes. Arguments are offered to support the assumption that there is a single concept of ‘rationality’, which applies univocally to mental states (like beliefs and intentions) and processes of reasoning (like choices and belief revisions), and plays a central role in epistemology, ethics, and the study of practical reason. It will be widely believed that ‘rationality’ is a normative concept: to think rationally is in a sense to think properly, or as one should think. The goal of the book is to defend this belief, and to explain how ‘rationality’ differs from other normative concepts. Although normative language is not the main topic, reflections on language will be methodologically important, to ensure that we are not misled by our linguistic intuitions.

scholarly journals Resisting Reductive Realism

2020 ◽  
pp. 96-117
Author(s):  
N. G. Laskowski
Keyword(s):  
Normative Concept ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Reductive Realism

Ethicists struggle to take reductive views seriously. Influential proponents of reductive views themselves admit as much. Ethicists also have trouble conceiving of some supervenience failures. Understanding why ethicists resist reductive views and why ethicists have trouble conceiving of some supervenience failures shores up new evidence for various theses about the distinctiveness of our use of normative concepts. This chapter builds on previous work to make a cumulative case for the view that what it is to use a normative concept is to use an unanalyzable natural-cognitive concept that is related to noncognitive elements of our psychology.

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