The increasing use of online simulations as replacements for animal dissection in the classroom or lab raises important questions about the nature of simulation itself and its relationship to embodied educational experience. This paper addresses these questions first by presenting a comparative hermeneutic-phenomenological investigation of online and offline dissection. It then interprets the results of this study in terms of Borgmann’s (1992) notion of the intentional “transparency” and “pliability” of simulated hyperreality. It makes the case that it is precisely encumbrance (...) and disruption—elements that are by definition excluded from simulations and interfaces—which give dissection its educational value. (shrink)

Why are the fundamentals of education apparently so little changed in our era of digital technology? Is their obstinate persistence evidence of resilience or obsolescence? Such questions can best be answered not by imagining an uncertain high-tech future, but by examining a well-documented past--a history of instruction and media that extends from Gilgamesh to Google. Norm Friesen looks to the combination and reconfiguration of oral, textual, and more recent media forms to understand the longevity of so many educational arrangements and (...) practices. Friesen examines the interrelationship of reading, writing, and pedagogy in the case of the lecture and the textbook--from their premodern to their postmodern incarnations. Over hundreds of years, these two forms have integrated textual, oral, and (more recently) digital media and connected them with changing pedagogical and cultural priorities. The Textbook and the Lecture opens new possibilities for understanding not only mediated pedagogical practices and their reform but also gradual changes in our conceptions of the knowing subject and of knowledge itself. Drawing on wide-ranging scholarship in fields as diverse as media ecology and German-language media studies, Foucauldian historiography, and even archaeological research, The Textbook and the Lecture is a fascinating investigation of educational media. (shrink)

Norm Phelps has long been one of the leading theoreticians, historians, and strategists of the animal advocacy movement. His new book collects his recent writings on this subject, as well as offers in print for the first time a fully revised and updated version of the e-book he published with Lantern in 2013 (978-1-59056-379-3). Phelps argues that faced with the overwhelming wealth and power of the animal exploitation industries, animal activists are like David trying to stand up to Goliath. But (...) rather than following the unsuccessful strategies of the past, Phelps proposes that we change the game by adopting David's strategy of refusing to play by Goliath's rules. Additional essays explore class and race in animal advocacy, the place of public policy vs. private morality in creating social change, and the unyielding barrier of human exceptionalism. Trenchant, wise, and deeply committed to the reduction of suffering and the liberation of animals, Changing the Game is sure to offer animal advocates much food for thought as the movement charts a way forward for all sentient beings. (shrink)

This response paper begins by countering the contributions of Don Ihde and Robert Rosenberger to this special issue, making its case in existential terms. Then, addressing Darin Barney, these arguments are developed further in aesthetic terms, making use of the “modernist” educational theory of René Arcilla. This response article concludes by returning to the realm of the educational with the help of Albert Borgmann's and Estrid Sørensen's feedback.

A culturally influential sub-discipline within literary studies, literary theory has developed in parallel form in other arts and social science disciplines, so that one might refer to "cultural theory" or "social theory" as well, or even just to "theory." It's as familiar as the word "postmodern" and as tricky as "deconstruction." What is it about? What is at stake? Theory is about rationality. This book's title invites two different interpretations of what it might mean to say so. For many, the (...) essence of literary theory is the unmasking and redescription of rationality in other terms. Put ironically, rationality is male; rationality is white; rationality is repression.... The book's title, however, can also be read in a second way. On this reading, rationality itself is the essence of literary theory and central to literature, art, and society. Certain conceptions of what it entails can be problematic; the critique in the first way of reading the title remains relevant. Yet one can affirm rationality as integral to human flourishing, including the processes of producing, analyzing, and enjoying literature, art, and culture. This book provides readers with a clear overview of theory's development and the abiding presence of its concern with the status of rationality across its forms. (shrink)

Instructional technology, and the cognitivist and systems paradigms that underpin it, grew out of the military-industrial complex during the Cold War. Much as the Pentagon and this military complex defined the architecture of the Internet, they also essentially created, ex nihilo, the fields of instructional technology and instructional design. The results of the ongoing dominance or influence of the Pentagon in these specific disciplines have been traced in research that appeared during the final phases of the Cold War. But this (...) research has not been updated to reflect circumstances now most definitive of the post–Cold War world: the rapid development of Internet infrastructures and applications, and the aggressive expansion of US military spending and activity. Tracing the imprint left by the US military on instructional technology and design, this paper considers how this influence may now extend, like the Internet itself, into schools and the university. It will conclude by stressing that the end of the Cold War, along with more recent developments concerning the US military, presents a juncture offering both opportunity and challenge to the evolving field of educational technology or “e-learning.”. (shrink)

This is the third of three volumes containing a report from the International Panel on Social Progress. The IPSP is an independent association of top research scholars with the goal of assessing methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. Written in accessible language by scholars across the social sciences and humanities, these volumes assess the achievements of world societies in past centuries, the current trends, the dangers that we are now facing, and the possible futures in the twenty-first (...) century. It covers the main socio-economic, political, and cultural dimensions of social progress, global as well as regional issues, and the diversity of challenges and their interplay around the world. This particular volume covers topics such as world cultures and religions, families, global health, education, and the contributions of social sciences to institutional change. (shrink)

The current studies (N = 255, children ages 4–5 and adults) explore patterns of age‐related continuity and change in conceptual representations of social role categories (e.g., “scientist”). In Study 1, young children's judgments of category membership were shaped by both category labels and category‐normative traits, and the two were dissociable, indicating that even young children's conceptual representations for some social categories have a “dual character.” In Study 2, when labels and traits were contrasted, adults and children based their category‐based induction (...) decisions on category‐normative traits rather than labels. Study 3 confirmed that children reason based on category‐normative traits because they view them as an obligatory part of category membership. In contrast, adults in this study viewed the category‐normative traits as informative on their own (not only as a cue to obligations). Implications for continuity and change in representations of social role categories will be discussed. (shrink)

The authors deploy an epistemic framework to represent culture and model the acquisition of cultural behavior. Yet, the framing inherits familiar problems with explaining the acquisition of norms. Such problems are conspicuous with regard to human societies where norms are ubiquitous. This creates a new difficulty for the authors in explaining change to mutually exclusive organizational structures of human life.

Research on folk epistemology usually takes place within one of two different paradigms. The first is centered on epistemic theories or, in other words, the way people think about knowledge. The second is centered on epistemic intuitions, that is, the way people intuitively distinguish knowledge from belief. In this paper, we argue that insufficient attention has been paid to the connection between the two paradigms, as well as to the mechanisms that underlie the use of both epistemic intuitions and theories. (...) We contend that research on folk epistemology must examine the use of both intuitions and theories in the pragmatic context of the game of giving and asking for reasons and, more generally, understand how these practices take place within the broader context of normative social cognition. (shrink)

Les théoriciens du droit se heurtent sans cesse à la question élémentaire de leur matière, celle de la définition du droit, plus précisément de sa délimitation par rapport à ce qui contraint sans en être et par rapport à ce qui y ressemble fort mais ne contraint pas de la même manière . En s’attachant dans sa thèse à la norme sociale de conduite saisie par le droit, Samuel Benisty prend en considération ce deuxième versant de la question et cherche (...) à démontrer que certains concepts du droit privé doivent être reconsidérés grâce à la prise en compte des normes sociales de conduite, qui constitueraient un système de normes à part entière.S. Benisty entend d’abord, dans la première partie de la thèse, établir un concept de norme qui lui permette de mener à bien son projet. Il considère en effet que le concept de norme le plus largement accepté parmi .. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to analyze the philosophy of values developed by Cornelius Castoriadis from his theory of the imaginary institution of societies. By understanding the emergence of imaginary significations, it is possible to identify their manifestations through the representations, the affects and the intentions of individuals. In this context, values correspond to a series of significations that motivate the conduct of individuals. In fact, in a specific society, individuals believe in symbols that make sense for them. The (...) presentation of the values does not reflect a moral project, but rather a socio-political construction that must be carefully described in order to identify the alteration of values over time. The article explores the way in which Castoriadis poses the problem of the persistence of past values with the risk of depending on established norms without being able to really transform them. In this perspective, Castoriadis refers to a fundamental value which is that of autonomy capable of questioning existing imaginaries. (shrink)

In Norms in the Wild, distinguished philosopher Cristina Bicchieri argues that when it comes to human behavior, social scientists place too much stress on rational deliberation. In fact, she says, many choices occur without much deliberation at all. Two people passing in a corridor automatically negotiate their shared space; cars at an intersection obey traffic signals; we choose clothing based on our instincts for what is considered appropriate. Bicchieri's theory of social norms accounts for these automatic components of coordination, where (...) individuals react automatically to cues that focus their attention on what the norm is in that situation. Social norms thus act as rules for making choices in a social world where people expect others -- often unconsciously -- to follow the same rule. Some norms enable seamless social co-operation, while others are less beneficial to human flourishing.Bicchieri is famous for her interdisciplinary work on game theory and most recently her work on social norms, and Norms in the Wild represents her latest challenge to many of the fundamental assumptions of the social sciences. Bicchieri's work has broad implications not only for understanding human behavior, but for changing it for better outcomes. People have a strongly conditioned preference for following social norms, but that also means that manipulating their expectations can cause major behavioral changes. Bicchieri has been working recently with UNICEF and other NGO's to explore the applicability of her views to issues of human rights around the world. Is it possible to change social expectations around forced marriage, genital mutilations, and public health practices like vaccinations and sanitation? If so, how? What tools might we use? This short book explores how social norms work, and how changing them - changing preferences, beliefs, and especially social expectations - can potentially improve lives all around the world. It will appeal to an unusually broad range of readers including philosophers, psychologists and others in behavioral sciences, and anyone involved in public policy or at NGOs. (shrink)

Cet article s’intéresse aux émotions dans l’internalisation et l’émergence des normes sociales. Nous y montrons comment les normes sociales ont un impact sur les émotions et comment les émotions ont un impact sur les normes sociales. Pour le faire, trois approches complémentaires mais souvent traitées indépendamment les unes des autres dans la littérature scientifique sont discutées. La première a trait à la façon dont les normes sociales (les normes émotionnelles) régulent les (...) émotions. Cette régulation se comprend comme l’internalisation de la normativité sociale dans les membres d’une société : les normes émotionnelles contribuent à la fabrique des dispositions émotionnelles des membres qui s’ajustent aux normes et aux valeurs valant dans leur société. La deuxième approche a trait au rôle des émotions dans le soutien aux normes sociales. Une fois que l’internalisation des normes et des valeurs est opérée et que les membres ont développé une sensibilité affective aux normes et aux valeurs de leur collectif, les émotions peuvent opérer comme des régulateurs des comportements : les émotions font que les membres se conforment aux normes et aux valeurs. Les normes internalisées suscitent des réactions émotionnelles qui contribuent au maintien de l’ordre normatif. La troisième approche affirme que les émotions contribuent à l’émergence des normes sociales et des valeurs dans une société donnée. En ce sens, les émotions peuvent contribuer à la transformation de l’ordre normatif. Il s’agit donc de la fabrique de la société. (shrink)

The paper is in four parts. The first part offers a brief reminder of the historical context for human rights as women's rights. The second part notes the relative lack of attention in human rights theory to the roles of social meaning and what has been called the ‘social imaginary’. The third part suggests that the social imaginary — understood in terms of the always present backdrop to meaningful social action — may be seen as a fruitful ‘middle ground’ upon (...) which negotiations may take place between human rights and cultural norms. The fourth part examines a case where women's entitlements to basic human rights are compromised by men's claims to cultural or group rights. I conclude by arguing that if human rights are to accommodate women's rights then women must be recognized as legitimate stakeholders in, and valuable contributors to, the necessarily ongoing re-invention and recreation of social meaning and cultural identity. (shrink)

I am supposed to give a lecture on campus this morning, but my teething, cranky toddler objects to day-care. I want to be there for my child when he feels unwell. But as I draft the email to cancel...

Our primary aim in this paper is to sketch a cognitive evolutionary approach for developing explanations of social change that is anchored on the psychological mechanisms underlying normative cognition and the transmission of social norms. We throw the relevant features of this approach into relief by comparing it with the self-fulfilling social expectations account developed by Bicchieri and colleagues. After describing both accounts, we argue that the two approaches are largely compatible, but that the cognitive evolutionary approach is well- suited (...) to encompass much of the social expectations view, whose focus on a narrow range of norms comes at the expense of the breadth the cognitive evolutionary approach can provide. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, the first translation into English of the ground-breaking 'Normativität und Macht' (Suhrkamp 2015), Rainer Forst presents a new approach to critical theory. Each essay reflects on the basic principles that guide our normative thinking. Forst's argument goes beyond 'ideal' and 'realist' theories and shows how closely the concepts of normativity and power are interrelated, and how power rests on the capacity to influence, determine, and possibly restrict the space of justifications for others. By combining insights (...) from the disciplines of philosophy, history, and the social sciences, Forst revaluates theories of justice, as well as of power, and provides the tools for a critical theory of relations of justification. Translated from German. (shrink)

To answer tantalizing questions such as whether animals are moral or how morality evolved, I propose starting with a somewhat less fraught question: do animals have normative cognition? Recent psychological research suggests that normative thinking, or ought-thought, begins early in human development. Recent philosophical research suggests that folk psychology is grounded in normative thought. Recent primatology research finds evidence of sophisticated cultural and social learning capacities in great apes. Drawing on these three literatures, I argue that the human variety of (...) social cognition and moral cognition encompass the same cognitive capacities and that the nonhuman great apes may also be normative beings. To make this argument, I develop an account of animal social norms that shares key properties with Cristina Bicchieri's account of social norms but which lowers the cognitive requirements for having a social norm. I propose a set of four early developing prerequisites implicated in social cognition that make up what I call naïve normativity: the ability to identify agents, sensitivity to in-group/out-group differences, the capacity for social learning of group traditions, and responsiveness to appropriateness. I review the ape cognition literature and present preliminary empirical evidence supporting the existence of social norms and naïve normativity in great apes. While there is more empirical work to be done, I hope to have offered a framework for studying normativity in other species, and I conclude that we should be open to the possibility that normative cognition is yet another ancient cognitive endowment that is not human-unique. (shrink)

This paper is an investigation into the metaphysics of social objects such as political borders, states, and organizations. I articulate a metaphysical puzzle concerning such objects and then propose a novel account of social objects that provides a solution to the puzzle. The basic idea behind the puzzle is that under appropriate circumstances, seemingly concrete social objects can apparently be created by acts of agreement, decree, declaration, or the like. Yet there is reason to believe that no concrete object can (...) be created in this way. The central idea of my positive account is that social objects have a normative component to them, and seemingly concrete social objects have both normative and material components. I develop this idea more rigorously using resources from the Aristotelian hylomorphic tradition. The resulting normative hylomorphic account, I argue, solves the puzzle by providing a satisfying explanation of creation-by-agreement and the like, while also avoiding the difficulties facing extant accounts of social objects. (shrink)

This paper introduces the Special Issue: ‘The Roots of Normativity. Developmental, Comparative and Conceptual issues’. The contributions collected in this volume aim to present a picture of contemporary accounts of normativity that integrate philosophy and developmental and comparative psychology and purport to provide the reader with new insights regarding a classical debate about what makes us human: being governed by norms and being able to orient ourselves in the light of them. This introduction presents a broad picture of the issues (...) at the heart of traditional discussions on normativity and lays out a set of conditions which a proper account of normativity should meet. In so doing the main common themes that unify these papers are brought to the fore. In particular, all of them share the idea that human-specific norms are themselves social. Once questions concerning the evolution of normative capacities and their development are considered, however, they pose - so it is argued - specific challenges to an account of normativity. While the traditional approaches fail to face such challenges, it is the main aim of the papers in this Special Issue to meet them. In concluding, a brief overview of each paper is provided. (shrink)

Social change is slow and difficult. Social change for animals is formidably slow and difficult. Advocates and scholars alike have long tried to change attitudes and convince the public that eating animals is wrong. The topic of norms and social change for animals has been neglected, which explains in part the relative failure of the animal protection movement to secure robust support reflected in social and legal norms. Moreover, animal ethics has suffered from a disproportionate focus on individual attitudes and (...) behavior at the expense of collective behavior, social change, and empirical psychology. If what we want to change is behavior on a large scale, norms are important tools. This article reviews an account of social norms that provides insights into the possibility and limitations of social change for animals, approaching animal protection as a problem of reverse social engineering. It highlights avenues for future work from this neglected perspective. (shrink)

Institutions are norm-governed social practices, or so I propose. But what does it mean for a norm to govern a social practice? Theories that analyze institutions as equilibria equate norms with sanctions and model them as costs. The idea is that the sanctions change preferences and thereby behavior. This view fails to capture the fact that people are often motivated by social norms as such, when they regard them as legitimate. I argue that, in order for a social norm to (...) be perceived as legitimate, agents have to acknowledge reasons for conforming to it other than the sanctions they might incur for violating it. In light of this, I defend a theory of institutions that does not only invoke equilibria, but also normative rules that are supported by normative expectations and, in some cases, normative beliefs. (shrink)

Legal norms are an invention. This paper advances a proposal about what kind of invention they are. The proposal is that legal norms derive from rules which specify role functions in a legal system. Legal rules attach to agents in virtue of their status within the system in which the rules operate. The point of legal rules or a legal system is to solve to large scale coordination problems, specifically the problem of organizing social and economic life among a group (...) of people and their successors, though not every legal rule pertains to a coordination problem. The framework for thinking about legal norms that I describe is a framework for thinking about institutions and policies more generally. The idea is to show that legal norms are a species of institutional norm. There are two central ideas. The first is the idea of a role in an institution. The second is the idea of proxy agency. Proxy agency involves one agent or group acting under the authorization of another agent or group (perhaps subsuming it) in a way that makes the actions of the proxy count as actions (under a description) of the individual or group for which it is a proxy. We get the characteristic structure of a legal system by conceiving of an institutional group, itself conceived of as a set of interlocking roles realized in individuals, as having one or more roles for proxy agents who are authorized by the group to make policy for the group. The set of rules governing the basic constitution of the group and spelling out the powers of the policy proxies determine fundamental norms for the group with specific role responsibilities attaching to particular positions in institutional arrangements. The policies determine further norms whose force derives from the fundamental norms. We must then say some further things to distinguish institutions and policies which we wish to designate as legal. (shrink)

Public shaming plays an important role in upholding valuable social norms. But, under what conditions, if any, is it morally justifiable? Our aim in this paper is systemically to investigate the morality of public shaming, so as to provide an answer to this neglected question. We develop an overarching framework for assessing the justifiability of this practice, which shows that, while shaming can sometimes be morally justifiable, it very often is not. In turn, our framework highlights several reasons to be (...) concerned about the increasingly widespread phenomenon of online public shaming. (shrink)

Tax compliance is a concern to governments around the world. Prior research (Alm, J. and I. Sanchez: 1995, KYKLOS 48, 3–19) has attributed unexplained inter-country differences in compliance rates to differences in social norms. Economics researchers studying tax compliance in the United States (U.S.) (see for example J. Andreoni et al.: 1998, Journal of Economic Literature 36, 818–860) have called for more attention to social (as opposed to economic) influences on tax compliance. In this study, we extend this prior research (...) by explicitly examining the role of social norms [Cialdini, R. and M. Trost: 1998, The Handbook of Social Psychology (Oxford University Press, New York)] on tax compliance in three different countries. We test our research hypotheses using a hypothetical compliance scenario, which was administered in Australia, Singapore, and the U.S. There were differences in compliance rates and social norms among the three countries. Factor analysis of the social norm questions identified three distinct social norm constructs. Two of these factors were significant in explaining tax compliance behavior. The first and most influential factor was taxpayers’ own personal moral beliefs, along with the beliefs of those close to them (e.g., friends and important others). The second significant factor represented societal views of proper behavior. We conclude that social norms help to explain tax compliance intentions and why tax compliance rates are higher than would be predicted by strictly economic models. (shrink)

This chapter examines how epistemic norms could be social norms, with a reliance on work on the philosophy and social science of social norms from Bicchieri (on the one hand) and Brennan, Eriksson, Goodin and Southwood (on the other hand). We explain how the social ontology of social norms can help explain the rationality of epistemic cooperation, and how one might begin to model epistemic games.

An experimental paradigm that purports to test young children’s understanding of social norms is examined. The paradigm models norms on Searle’s notion of a constitutive rule. The experiments and the reasons provided for their design are discussed. It is argued that the experiments do not provide direct evidence about the development of social norms and that the concepts of a social norm and constitutive rule are distinct. The experimental data are re-interpreted, and suggestions for how to deal with the present (...) criticism are presented that do not require abandoning the paradigm as such. Then the conception of normativity that underlies the experimental paradigm is rejected and an alternative view is put forward. It is argued that normativity emerges from interaction and engagement, and that learning to comply with social norms involves understanding the distinction between their content, enforcement, and acceptance. As opposed to rule-based accounts that picture the development of an understanding of social norms as one-directional and based in enforcement, the present view emphasizes that normativity is situated, reciprocal, and interactive. (shrink)

We sometimes violate social norms in order to express our views and to trigger public debates. Many extant accounts of social norms don’t give us any insight into this phenomenon. Drawing on Cristina Bicchieri’s work, I am putting forward an empirical hypothesis that helps us to understand such norm violations. The hypothesis says, roughly, that we often adhere to norms because we are systematically blind to norm-violating options. I argue that this hypothesis is independently plausible and has interesting consequences. It (...) implies, e.g., that some experimental paradigms for investigating social norms have hitherto unnoticed shortcomings. (shrink)

This volume offers eleven philosophical investigations into our future relations with social robots--robots that are specially designed to engage and connect with human beings. The contributors present cutting edge research that examines whether, and on which terms, robots can become members of human societies. Can our relations to robots be said to be "social"? Can robots enter into normative relationships with human beings? How will human social relations change when we interact with robots at work and at home? The authors (...) of this volume explore these questions from the perspective of philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, and robotics. The first three chapters offer a taxonomy for the classification of simulated social interactions, investigate whether human social interactions with robots can be genuine, and discuss the significance of social relations for the formation of human individuality. Subsequent chapters clarify whether robots could be said to actually follow social norms, whether they could live up to the social meaning of care in caregiving professions, and how we will need to program robots so that they can negotiate the conventions of human social space and collaborate with humans. Can we perform joint actions with robots, where both sides need to honour commitments, and how will such new commitments and practices change our regional cultures? The authors connect research in social robotics and empirical studies in Human-Robot Interaction to recent debates in social ontology, social cognition, as well as ethics and philosophy of technology. -/- The book is a response to the challenge that social robotics presents for our traditional conceptions of social interaction, which presuppose such essential capacities as consciousness, intentionality, agency, and normative understanding. The authors develop insightful answers along new interdisciplinary pathways in "robophilosophy," a new research area that will help us to shape the "robot revolution," the distinctive technological change of the beginning 21st century. (shrink)

Sometimes subjects have sufficient internal and external resources to retrieve information stored in memory, in particular information that carries socially charged content. Yet, they fail to do so: they forget it. These cases pose an explanatory challenge to common explanations of forgetting in cognitive science. In this paper, I take this challenge and develop a new explanation of these cases. According to this explanation, these cases are best explained as cases of norm-induced forgetting: cases in which forgetting is caused by (...) social norms in a relevant sense. These cases draw attention to the normative aspects of the mechanisms of forgetting. This is an important but neglected aspect of cases of everyday forgetting, in particular of those characterized by a social dimension. By investigating some ways in which the psychology of social norms is causally relevant in the mechanisms of retrieval failure, I begin to fill this gap. (shrink)

In the following article, we propose an analytical framework for the analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Standards based on the paradigmatic nexus of voice and entitlement. We follow the theory of decentration and present the concept of Transnational Norm-Building Networks (TNNs), which — as we argue — comprise a new nexus of voice and entitlement beyond the nation—state level. Furthermore, we apply the analytical framework to the ISO 26000 initiative and the Global Compact. We conclude the article with remarks (...) on the legitimacy and the effectiveness of norms generated by TNNs. Through this, we aim to contribute a new theoretical foundation to the analysis of CSR standards, which enables us to undertake a more differentiated description of TNN structures which have hitherto been ignored in academic literature. Secondly, we will contribute to the practical debate on ISO 26000 and the Global Compact by proposing new perspectives on the conditions of their legitimacy and effectiveness based on the voice-entitlement nexus. (shrink)

Epistemologists can be divided into two camps: those who think that nothing short of certainty or (subjective) probability 1 can warrant assertion and those who disagree with this claim. This paper addressed this issue by inquiring into the problem of setting the probability threshold required for assertion in such a way that that the social epistemic good is maximized, where the latter is taken to be the veritistic value in the sense of Goldman (Knowledge in a social world, 1999). We (...) provide a Bayesian model of a test case involving a community of inquirers in a social network engaged in group deliberation regarding the truth or falsity of a proposition $p.$ p . Results obtained by means of computer simulation indicate that the certainty rule is optimal in the limit of inquiry and communication but that a lower threshold is preferable in less idealized cases. (shrink)

It is often claimed that humans are rational, linguistic, cultural, or moral creatures. What these characterizations may all have in common is the more fundamental claim that humans are normative animals, in the sense that they are creatures whose lives are structured at a fundamental level by their relationships to norms. The various capacities singled out by discussion of rational, linguistic, cultural, or moral animals might then all essentially involve an orientation to obligations, permissions and prohibitions. And, if this is (...) so, then perhaps it is a basic susceptibility, or proclivity to normative or deontic regulation of thought and behavior that enables humans to develop the various specific features of their life form. This volume of new essays investigates the claim that humans are essentially normative animals in this sense. The contributors do so by looking at the nature and relations of three types of norms, or putative norms-social, moral, and linguistic-and asking whether they might all be different expressions of one basic structure unique to humankind. These questions are posed by philosophers, primatologists, behavioral biologists, psychologists, linguists, and cultural anthropologists, who have collaborated on this topic for many years. The contributors are committed to the idea that understanding normativity is a two-way process, involving a close interaction between conceptual clarification and empirical research. (shrink)

The Social Theory of Practices effectively criticized conceptions of social practices as rule-governed or regularity-exhibiting performances. Turner’s criticisms nevertheless overlook an alternative, "normative" conception of practices as constituted by the mutual accountability of their performances. Such a conception of practices also allows a more adequate understanding of normativity in terms of accountability to what is at issue and at stake in a practice. We can thereby understand linguistic practice and normative authority without having to posit stable meanings, rules, norms, or (...) presuppositions underlying the manifest diversity of social life. Key Words: normativity • practices • rules • language. (shrink)

This article explains how social norms can help to distinguish and understand a range of different kinds of social inequality and social hierarchy. My aim is to show how the literature on social norms can provide crucial resources to relational egalitarianism, which has made social equality and inequality into a central topic of contemporary normative political theorizing. The hope is that a more discriminating and detailed picture of different kinds of social inequality will help relational egalitarians move beyond a discussion (...) of the justice or injustice of social equality as a single general category. (shrink)

Emotion plays an important role in securing social stability. But while emotions like fear, anger, and guilt have received much attention in this context, little work has been done to understand the role that anxiety plays. That’s unfortunate. I argue that a particular form of anxiety—what I call ‘practical anxiety’—plays an important, but as of yet unrecognized, role in norm-based social regulation. More specifically, it provides a valuable form of metacognition, one that contributes to social stability by helping individuals negotiate (...) the challenges that come from having to act in the face of unclear norms. (shrink)

In her book Social Goodness, Charlotte Witt gives an account of the normativity of social norms, crucially appealing to (and naming) social role normativity. Social role normativity is a distinctive kind of normativity that follows from social roles. For example, teachers ought to teach and students ought to do their homework. According to Witt's artisanal model of social role normativity, we should make sense of social role normativity by reference to artisanal roles, like being a carpenter. Just as carpenters have (...) skills, techniques, and expertise associated with their craft, social roles have skills, techniques, and expertise associated with them. The artisanal model presents the individual craftsperson, taught by a uniquely qualified expert, as the paradigm. Because of this, I argue that the artisanal model struggles to capture the messiness of the actual world, where expertise is distributed, unstable, and contested. To accommodate the real world, we should move away from Witt's individualistic artisanal model. Instead of focusing on individual artisans, our account of social role normativity should focus on communities and institutions that promote artisanal practices. (shrink)

A commonplace in contemporary philosophy is that mental content has normative properties. A number of writers associate this view to the idea that the normativity of content is essentially connected to its social character. I agree with the first thesis, but disagree with the second. The paper examines three kinds of views according to which the norms of thought and content are social: Wittgenstein’s rule following considerations, Davidson’s triangulation argument, and Brandom’s inferential pragmatics, and criticises each. It is argued that (...) there are objective conceptual norms constitutive of mental content, but that these are not essentially social. (shrink)

How should we understand the claim that people comply with social norms because they possess the right kinds of beliefs and preferences? I answer this question by considering two approaches to what it is to believe (and prefer), namely: representationalism and dispositionalism. I argue for a variety of representationalism, viz. neural representationalism. Neural representationalism is the conjunction of two claims. First, what it is essential to have beliefs and preferences is to have certain neural representations. Second, neural representations are often (...) necessary to adequately explain behaviour. After having canvassed one promising way to understand what neural representations could be, I argue that the appeal to beliefs and preferences in explanations of paradigmatic cases of norm compliance should be understood as an appeal to neural representations. (shrink)

We are all immersed in a sea of social norms, but they are sometimes tricky to observe with any clarity. They are often invisible to us and emerge only when they are not observed. Social norms are important to understand because they are both limiting of our freedom, such as gendered and racialized norms, and at the same time the very conditions of our agency. Social Goodness presents an original, externalist answer to the question of the source or origin of (...) social role normativity. Rather than grounding social normativity in the attitudes of persons, the book argues for an externalism that roots social role normativity in the social world itself: in its positions, institutions, and larger architecture. The core insight of externalism is that the function or structural feature of an enterprise or activity can bring with it normative demands quite independently of the attitudes of those who engage with it. According to the artisanal model, just as a carpenter, ceramicist, or chef is responsive to and evaluable under a set of artisanal norms or techniques, so too is a mother and or an academic or a President. The source of normativity is this technique or expertise, independent of the preferences, endorsements, or recognitive attitudes of individuals. The artisanal model for social role normativity has resources to explain both the "stickiness" or persistence of social norms and our ability to criticize existing norms and to engage in normative self-creation--to create new normative selves. The artisanal model also has resources to capture and express the social situatedness, locality, and materiality of social roles. The relational ontology of social roles, implicit in the artisanal model, provides a useful frame to consider both hierarchical and oppressive social relations. (shrink)

This article shows that social norms are better explained as correlating devices for a correlated equilibrium of the underlying stage game, rather than Nash equilibria. Whereas the epistemological requirements for rational agents playing Nash equilibria are very stringent and usually implausible, the requirements for a correlated equilibrium amount to the existence of common priors, which we interpret as induced by the cultural system of the society in question. When the correlating device has perfect information, we need in addition only to (...) posit that individuals obey the social norm when it is costless to do so. When the correlating device has incomplete information, the operation of the social norm requires that individuals have a predisposition to follow the norm even when this is costly. The latter case explains why social norms are associated with other-regarding preferences and provides a basis for analyzing honesty and corruption. (shrink)