scholarly journals What is Normativity?

Disputatio ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (23) ◽  
pp. 247-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Skorupski
Keyword(s):  
Normative Concept ◽  
Conceptual Version

Abstract The thesis that the concept of a reason is the fundamental normative concept is in the air. In this paper, I examine what it amounts to, how to formulate it, and how ambitious it should be. I distinguish a semantic version, according to which any normative predicate is definitionally reducible to a reason predicate, and a conceptual version, according to which the sole normative ingredient in any normative concept is the concept of a reason. Although I reject the semantic version, I examine its potential in some detail. And I claim that the conceptual version is plausible.

Normative Properties

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matti Eklund
Keyword(s):  
Normative Concept ◽  
Normative Role ◽  
The Way

What is it for a property to be normative? Some possible answers are explored and rejected in this chapter, among them that a property is normative if it is ascribed by some normative concept. A positive claim defended is that a property is normative if and only if it is ascribed by some concept whose reference is determined by normative role. Along the way, the supposed connection between normativity and motivation is addressed. Theoretically important distinctions are drawn relating to the idea of normative role determining reference. Normative role can determine reference either fully or partially. Also, the possibility of reference magnetism complicates how one should think about some of these things.

Is Rationality Normative?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Wedgwood
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Ought Implies Can ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Formal Theories

In its original meaning, the word ‘rational’ referred to the faculty of reason—the capacity for reasoning. It is undeniable that the word later came also to express a normative concept—the concept of the proper use of this faculty. Does it express a normative concept when it is used in formal theories of rational belief or rational choice? Reasons are given for concluding that it does express a normative concept in these contexts. But this conclusion seems to imply that we ought always to think rationally. Four objections can be raised. (1) What about cases where thinking rationally has disastrous consequences? (2) What about cases where we have rational false beliefs about what we ought to do? (3) ‘Ought’ implies ‘can’—but is it true that we can always think rationally? (4) Rationality requires nothing more than coherence—but why does coherence matter?

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.

Non-normative use of reflexivity in social work with families in the Czech Republic

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kateřina Glumbíková
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Data Analysis ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Field Observations ◽  
Personal Interest ◽  
Professional Literature ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Initial Interviews

Abstract Discourse on the normative use of reflexivity predominates in the professional literature. Expert articles on the topic of non-normative use of reflexivity, which is based on the presumption that social workers do not use reflexivity to improve their work quality, but rather its functions for themselves to fulfil specific purposes, is missing, with some exceptions in the literature. The presented article therefore aims to understand the use of reflexivity in the practice of social work with families in its non-normative concept and to determine the implications for social work. Using the abduction method (in which Schechtman’s narrative identity theory was applied to data analysis), the following four categories of the use of reflexivity in a non-normative way were saturated with data obtained from initial interviews, field observations and subsequent reflection of field observations with social workers: personal interest, survival, moral responsibility and compensation. The non-normative concept of reflexivity is further discussed in the context of specific implications for education and practice of social work.

The “Normative” Concept of Personhood in Wiredu’s Moral Philosophy

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-144
Author(s):  
Motsamai Molefe
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
The Other ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Essential Aspect

The article explores the place and status of the normative concept of personhood in Kwasi Wiredu’s moral philosophy. It begins by distinguishing an ethic from an ethics, where one involves cultural values and the other strict moral values. It proceeds to argue, by a careful exposition of Wiredu’s moral philosophy, that he locates personhood as an essential aspect of communalism [an ethic], and it specifies culture-specific standards of excellence among traditional African societies. I conclude the article by considering one implication of the conclusion, which is that personhood embodies cultural values of excellence concerning the place and status of partiality in Wiredu’s moral philosophy. Keywords: Afro-communitarianism, agent-centred personhood, Ethic, Ethics, Kwasi Wiredu, Partiality Personhood.

scholarly journals POSTSECULAR RELIGIOSITY AND ITS CONCEPTUAL VERSIONS: FROM "INVISIBLE RELIGION" TO "RELIGION WITHOUT ESSENCE"

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (10(74)) ◽  
pp. 31-36
Author(s):  
V. Mashchytska
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Religious Organizations ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Individual Interest ◽  
Secular World ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
Secular Religion ◽  
Cover Up ◽  
Conceptual Version

The article is devoted to the theoretical reconstruction of the of the conceptual version of postsecular religiosity. All the theories clame that the traditional religion can survive today through cover-up it’s religious identity. This is accompanied by the marginalization of religious organizations and an increase in the influence of religion at the level of individual interest. Theological analysis is limited mainly by negative characteristics when describing post-secular religiosity: the devaluation of transcendence and the rejection of dualism (Daniel HervierLeger), the absence of doctrinal boundaries (Thomas Luckmann), the weakening of the ideological core of the doctrine (Roberto Cipriani). The author argues that post-secular religion is an implicit ideology in terms of the way it functions. In the late XX - early XXI century, a number of researchers (U. Eco, S. Zizek, G. Marcuse and others) noted that the imaginary post-ideology of modern society is associated with the formation of a specific type of ideology, which can be designated as "implicit". The post-Christian secular world is also "implicitly" religious. The author reveals the commonality of the processes taking place in the field of religion with the characteristics of the "post-ideological" world and concludes that the religiosity of the post-secular society is most productive to study precisely as part of an implicit ideology.

scholarly journals Menneskeverdet i tre nyere tolkninger som placeholder, heuristisk og «flytende signifikant»

2019 ◽  
pp. 215-237
Author(s):  
Ådne Valen-Sendstad
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Second World War ◽  
European Law ◽  
World War ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Second World ◽  
Common Understanding

In this chapter I discuss three new ways, of understanding human dignity. First, Christopher McCrudden’s concern is with the fact that there is no common understanding of the concept. He argues that dignity is a placeholder. It is open to interpretations from a diversity of normative understandings, – religious and secular. Still, he argues for a core of overlapping content within the diversity of understandings. Second, Catherine Dupré understands human dignity as a heuristic concept, open for new interpretations. The concept is in itself inexhaustible. New meanings develop in confrontation with new issues. Observing that the concept has become one of the pillars in European law and democracies, and has been crucial in several junctions when dictatorships has fallen and democracies has been established after the Second World War, she finds that the concept comes to its right in particular in transitional and transformative situations. Finally, Costas Douzinas does not work with the concept human dignity but with the concept of the human, to whom human dignity is designated in the human rights. I reinterpret his theory to also cover the normative concept human dignity. It is brought into force by proclamations, and as such becomes a transformative and life changing concept in particular for people living in need of dignity.

scholarly journals Affective recognition and social freedom - the psychoanalytic and normative-reconstructive logics of grounding social critique in Axel Honneth’s work

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-434
Author(s):  
Werner Euler
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Individual Recognition ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Normative Reconstruction ◽  
Legal Subjects

The task of this paper is the following: how should one explain and solve the theory-immanent tension in Honneth?s recent works, i.e. the tension that reflects the difference between the concept of social freedom (a concept grounded in Hegel?s social philosophy methodologically articulated through normative reconstruction) and the concept of ?affective recognition? (which has replaced the earlier normative concept) - in other words: is there a certain logically-factually grounded path from the question of subjective-individual recognition to the intersubjective recognition of free (legal) subjects in society? My thesis is the fol?lowing: this supposed tension is a pseudo-tension. It loosens up - without completely resolving itself - as soon as we combine the two logics of grounding critique that we find in Honneth. However, unrelated to my claim about the pseudo-nature of the mentioned tension, the psychoanalytic mode of grounding critique is erroneous, since one cannot directly arrive at collective components of society starting from the empirical constellation of individual consciousnesses. The relation between subjective individuality and objective (intersubjective) generality is an objective contradiction (as opposed to a purely theoretical tension). If we still decide to pursue this path of grounding critique, we inadvertently introduce a psychologistic approach into social theory. Such an approach can be found in Honneth?s theory of intersubjective (normative) recognition as well.

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