Seminar on Normativity

Content

This course concerns normativity, the “ought” –side of the is/ought – divide. The focus is on the dependencies between normative reasons, ‘oughts’, requirements of rationality and social norms.

The course examines what can be called a “reasons approach”, which holds that the notion of a normative reason, “a consideration standing in favour of an action” is central to normativity. Reasons are considerations that justify, make intelligible or eligible or “right”, call for, or require some response such as an action or belief. In happy cases, reasons also motivate and guide agents accordingly, and we can explain why they do what they do by citing the reasons for which they acted. Very different starting points for analysing normativity might be accepted social norms (as in social constructivism); or proper functioning of (procedural, formal) rationality (either in Kantian or other form).

The coursework will include participating the sessions, reading the assigned texts, presenting one of the texts, and writing a short essay.

The first meeting (14.1) will be an introductory lecture, and there are no readings assigned for that. For the other meetings the participants should read one text at a time. The readings will be available from the lobby of Philosophica library (Siltavuorenpenger 20A).

Here’s some preliminary info about the readings:

21.1

The first reading (“Normativity” by Derek Parfit) concerns the nature of normativity, defending the irreducibility of normativity to natural facts, or to motivational force, and yet defending the idea that normative facts are nonetheless genuine facts. (Parfit).

Derek Parfit (1997, 124) has drawn the distinction between two kinds of facts, “normatively significant” descriptive facts (1: “jumping out of a burning building is the only way to save my life”), and literally “normative” facts (2:“the truth of (1) gives me a reason to jump”). He defends the kind of non–naturalist, objectivist realism according to which the latter claim can be a fact, but one which possesses normative force (to be distinguished from motivational force, although ideally people are motivated accordingly).

Derek Parfit’s paper “normativity” (2006) clarifies the irreducibility of normative facts to anything else, and discusses contrary statements by a number of theorists (Hare, Falk, Nowell–Smith, Williams, Korsgaard, Nagel). You are adviced to read especially the bits which seem most understandable to you, and flip through the other parts – some bits may be hard reading if you haven’t read the texts that Parfit comments on, but the moral of the story should be clear enough.

Further, optional reading: (downloadable from http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ball2568/parfit/bibliography.htm)

• Parfit, Reasons and Motivation; Parfit, Rationality and Reasons; and why not the manuscript Parfit, On What Matters (very long – 600 pages or so)

28.1 (and possibly 4.2)

Then we will discuss Joseph Raz’s early statement (1975; 2nd rev.ed 1990) of the reasons approach. He makes various points about the nature of reasons, and attempts to cash out the normativity of social and legal norms in terms of reasons, especially the second–order “exclusionary reasons”.

11.2 (and possibly 4.2)

John Broome poses a dual challenge to the reasons approach: on the one hand wide–scope “normative requirements”, such as requirements of rationality, cannot be cashed out in terms of reasons, and on the other hand “oughts” are more central than reasons. But it has come unclear whether the first kind of requirements are genuinely “normative” at all, and it is not clear whether either reasons or oughts are primary.

18.2

Jonathan Dancy’s holism about reasons and his moral particularism will suggest we need a clearer distinction between situation–specific facts and general principles – Dancy in effect argues that principles have no interesting role to play, and that reasons function in very irregular ways from situation to another. Dancy further distinguishes between the normative relation of “being a reason” (“favourer”) and the normative relation of “being a right–making (or ought–making) feature”. He suggests that neither is primary. Further, he distinguishes these from such roles as “enabling” or “intensifying” – the features in these roles affect reasons but are not reasons themselves.

25.2

Judith Jarvis Thomson in her paper “normativity” holds that value and reasons–and–oughts, or “evaluatives” and “directives” are intimately connected, but following Peter Geach, Philippa Foot et al she holds that goodness or value is always kind–dependent. There are various kinds of good x’s: good knifes, and good natural functionings of living beings, but nothing (no state of affairs, say) is simply good as such – there is always implicit reference to its “kind”. And things which are not good in their kind are defective. So the key to Thomson’s view on normativity is that things ought not be defective. John Broome argues that such views as Foot’s or Thomson’s falls short of genuine normativity. Does it? Or could Thomson’s views help to see how Broome’s “requirements or rationality” can be understood as “ought to be” norms?

A video of her related lecture: http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.asp?showID=9543