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- Kathrin Glüer-Pagin & Åsa Wikforss, Against Content Normativity.As meaning’s claim to normativity has grown increasingly suspect the normativity thesis has shifted to mental content. In this paper, we distinguish two versions of content normativism: ‘CE normativism’, according to which it is essential to content that certain ‘oughts’ can be derived from it, and ‘CD normativism’, according to which content is determined by norms in the first place. We argue that neither type of normativism withstands scrutiny. CE normativism appeals to the fact that there is an essential connection between content and correctness conditions. But, we argue, this fact is by itself normatively innocent, and attempts to add a normative dimension via the normativity of belief ultimately fail. CD normativism, in turn, falls prey to the ‘dilemma of regress and idleness’: the appeal to rules either leads to some form of regress of rules, or the notion of rule following is reduced to an idle label. We conclude by suggesting that our arguments do not support naturalism: It is a mistake to assume that normativism and naturalism are our only options.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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What I hope to do in this paper is to see whether Laudan’s normative naturalism may suggest a third alternative to normativism-naturalism dilemma in the analytical philosophy of science. In criticizing the view that all methodological rules are to be specified in the form of hypothetical imperatives, I offer the idea that a theory of scientific rationality (including its normative dimension) must go beyond the usual analytical format of “rational reconstruction”. It is precisely this idea that opens the door for a hermeneutic alternative to normative naturalism. On this alternative, one has to pay attention to the contextual normativity of doing scientific research, if one wants to give an account of the articulation of methodological rules and norms.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In Making it Explicit, Brandom aims to articulate an account of conceptual content that accommodates its normativity--a requirement on theories of content that Brandom traces to Wittgenstein's rule following considerations. It is widely held that the normativity requirement cannot be met, or at least not with ease, because theories of content face an intractable dilemma. Brandom proposes to evade the dilemma by adopting a middle road--one that uses normative vocabulary, but treats norms as implicit in practices. I argue that this proposal fails to evade the dilemma, as Brandom himself understands it. Despite his use of normative vocabulary, Brandom's theory fares no better than the reductionist theories he criticises. I consider some responses that Brandom might make to my charges, and finally conclude that his proposal founders on his own criteria.
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| | Other links: interscience.wiley.com ingentaconnect.com jstor.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: blackwell-synergy.com blackwell-synergy.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: blackwell-synergy.com blackwell-synergy.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In "Assertion," Geach identified failure to attend to the distinction between meaning and speech act as a source of philosophical errors. I argue that failure to attend to this distinction, along with the parallel distinction between attitude and content, has been behind the idea that meaning and content are, in some sense, normative. By an argument parallel to Geach's argument against performative analyses of "good" we can show that the phenomena identified by theorists of the normativity of content are properties in the first instance of speech act and propositional attitude types, rather than content as such.
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| | Other links: nd.edu blackwell-synergy.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... “Intentional content,” as I understand it, is whatever serves as the object of “propositional” attitude verbs, such as “think,” “judge,” “represent,” “prefer” (whether or not these objects are “propositions”). These verbs are standardly used to pick out the intentional states invoked to explain the states and behavior of people and many animals. I shall take the “normativity of the intentional,” or “Normativism,” to be the claim that any adequate theory of intentional states involves considerations of value not essentially involved in the natural sciences. Thus, according to Normativism, whether or not someone thinks that fish sleep, or even can represent fish at all, depends upon making a judgment about the person’s goodness or rationality, of a sort that would not be involved in merely determining whether or not fish in fact sleep.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Review Essay of Stephen P. Turner, Explaining the Normative, 2010.
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| | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The paper argues that applications of the principle that “ought” implies “can” (OIC) depend on normative considerations even if the link between “ought” and “can” is logical in nature. Thus, we should reject a common, “factualist” conception of OIC and endorse weak “normativism”. Even if we use OIC as the rule ““cannot” therefore “not ought””, applying OIC is not a mere matter of facts and logic, as factualists claim, but often draws on “proto-ideals” of moral agency.
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| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: journals.cambridge.org journals.cambridge.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: journals.cambridge.org journals.cambridge.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Many people claim that semantic content is normative, and that therefore naturalistic theories of content face a potentially insuperable difficulty. The normativity of content allegedly undermines naturalism by introducing a gap between semantic 'ought's and the explanatory resources of naturalism. I argue here that this problem is not ultimately pressing for naturalists. The normativity thesis, I maintain, is ambiguous; it could mean either that the content of a term prescribes a pattern of use, or that it merely determines which pattern of use can be described as 'correct'. For the antinaturalist argument to go forward, content must be prescriptive. I argue, however, that it is not. Moreover, the thesis that content supplies standards for correct use is insufficient to supply a similar, a priori objection to naturalism.
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| | Other links: interscience.wiley.com ingentaconnect.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In a recent article,1 I defend the claim that meaning is an intrinsically normative notion. To say that meaning is normative is, for present purposes, to say that from a statement of an expression’s meaning there follows immediately and without further ado a statement concerning how that expression should (not) or may (not) be used. Call this Normativism. In a reply,2 Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss (hereafter, G&W), both prominent anti-Normativists, 3 argue that I fail in my attempt to defend Normativism against the objections I consider.
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| | Other links: eprints.soton.ac.uk | Scholar | More options ... As meaning's claim to normativity has grown increasingly suspect the normativity thesis has shifted to mental content. In this paper, we distinguish two versions of content normativism: 'CE normativism', according to which it is essential to content that certain 'oughts' can be derived from it, and 'CD normativism', according to which content is determined by norms in the first place. We argue that neither type of normativism withstands scrutiny. CE normativism appeals to the fact that there is an essential connection between content and correctness conditions. But, we argue, this fact is by itself normatively innocent, and attempts to add a normative dimension via the normativity of belief ultimately fail. CD normativism, in turn, falls prey to the 'dilemma of regress and idleness': the appeal to rules either leads to some form of regress of rules, or the notion of rule-following is reduced to an idle label. We conclude by suggesting that our arguments do not support naturalism: it is a mistake to assume that normativism and naturalism are our only options.
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| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: people.su.se jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: people.su.se jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Kathrin Glüer-Pagin & Åsa Wikforss, Against content normativity
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