Can Constitutive Rules Bridge the Gap Between Is- and Ought-Statements?

Abstract

Institutions can be analyzed in terms of constitutive rules that forge intimate connections between statements about facts and norms. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate whether constitutive rules thereby bridge the gap between is-statements and ought-statements. I use the status account of constitutive rules that I have proposed elsewhere to explain that they are partly descriptive and partly normative, and I argue that they support the derivation of objective ought-statements, but only against the background of a normative principle. Hence, they do not as such bridge the Is-Ought gap.

Appendices

Appendix 1: The Is-Ought Derivation and the Transformation View

The Is-Ought Derivation can more formally be presented as follows:

• 1. Necessarily (p iff CA(p))  [CAP]

• 2. CA (C → (X ↔ Y))   [CA(B)]

• 3. C → (X ↔ Y))       [B]

• 4. Y = _def Z            [S]

• 5. Ca

• 6. Xa ↔ Ya

• 7. Xa

• 8. Ya

• 9. Za

Statement (3) follows from premises (1) and (2). Premises (5) and (7) are empirical statements. Statement (6) follows from premises (3) and (5). Statement (8) follows from premises (6) and (7). And statement (9) follows from premises (4) and (8). In contrast to the derivation in Appendix 2, this derivation includes context C—see premises (2), (3), and (5).

The version of the derivation that is based on regulative rules rather than on constitutive rules proceeds as follows:

• 1. Necessarily (p iff CA(p))  [CAP]

• 2. CA (X → Z)          [CA(R)]

• 3. X → Z               [R]

• 4. Xa

• 5. Za

Statement (3) follows from premises (1) and (2). Statement (4) is an empirical premise. And statement (5) follows from premises (3) and (4).

The claim that constitutive rules are strictly speaking redundant is supported by what I have elsewhere called “the transformation view of constitutive rules” (Hindriks 2005, 2009; Hindriks and Guala 2015). The transformation view consists of two claims. First, regulative rules can be transformed into constitutive rules without adding any new information. Second, constitutive rules entail regulative rules. I discuss these two claims in reverse order.

The structure of regulative rules can be rendered as follows [R]:

• [R] X → Z

As before, the constitutive rule is given by the following two schemas:

• [B] C → (X ↔ Y)

• [S] Y = _def Z

Together, these two premises entail the following:

• [B*] C → (X → Z)

Formulations of regulative rules typically do not explicitly feature a context. Even so, they are relative to context simply because they are in force only in the context in which they are collectively accepted (which means that a regulative rule is relative to a particular group). In light of this, I assume that the relevant context obtains:

• [C] C

Together, [B*] and [C] imply:

• [R] X → Z

This reveals that constitutive rules do indeed entail regulative rules.

The other claim of the transformation view is that regulative rules can be transformed into constitutive rules without adding any new information. The first and most important step of the transformation is to introduce a status term and define it in terms of normative powers Z:

• [S] Y = _def Z

Note that introducing a new term in this way does not add any new information. [S] facilitates the second step of the transformation, which is to reformulate [R] as follows:

• [R*] X → Y

The third step is to make the context explicit, which results in the following formulation (R_P):

• [R⁺] C → (X → Y)

On the assumption that Y can be realized only in one way—an assumption that I relax shortly—X and Y mutually imply each other. This facilitates the fourth step:

• [B] C → (X ↔ Y)

As the combination of [B] and [S] is a constitutive rule, this completes the transformation.

The only qualification that needs to be made is that many if not all institutional statuses can be manifested in more than one way depending on context. In other words, they are multiply realizable. For instance, money need not be made of paper, but can also be made of shells. Exactly because statuses are context-relative, the fact that a certain status is instantiated does not as such entail that it is manifested in a particular way. The mutual entailment between X and Y can, however, be preserved by using a subscript to indicate context-relativity:

• [B*] C → (X_C ↔ Y_C)

“Y_C” should be regarded as a name for a status in a particular context, such as “dollar,” “euro,” or “yen.” This completes my defense of the transformation view of constitutive rules.¹

Appendix 2: The Case of Promising

The derivation of the normative statement that someone ought to or is obligated to do as promised is analogous to the derivation of the right to use a piece of land presented in Section 3. A central claim is that some utterance qualifies as a promise, i.e., premise (5). This depends on the base rule of promising, i.e., premise (3). In order for this base rule to be in force, it has to be collectively accepted, i.e., premise (2). Furthermore, the collective acceptance of a proposition must entail that the proposition is true, i.e., premise (1). When it is and a particular utterance does indeed qualify as a promise, then the status rule of promising, i.e., premise (4) can be used to derive the normative statement (Hindriks 2013).² I refer to sentences that qualify as promises when someone utters them as P-sentences.

• 1. Necessarily (p iff CA(p))

• 2. CA (Anybody who utters a P-sentence thereby makes a promise)

• 3. Anybody who utters a P-sentence thereby makes a promise.

• 4. Anybody who makes a promise is obligated to do as promised.

• 5. Jones utters a P-sentence (“I hereby promise to pay you, Smith, five dollars”).

• 6. Jones makes a promise (to pay Smith five dollars).

• 7. Jones is obligated to do as promised (i.e., to pay Smith five dollars).

The derivation can be simplified by replacing the constitutive rule with a regulative rule, i.e., by replacing premises (2)–(4) with premises (2)–(3). This makes the intermediate conclusion—premise (6)—about Jones having made a promise redundant:

• 1*. Necessarily (p iff CA(p))

• 2*. CA (If someone utters a P-sentence, he is obligated to act accordingly)

• 3*. If someone utters a P-sentence, he is obligated to act accordingly.

• 4*. Jones utters a P-sentence (“I hereby promise to pay you, Smith, five dollars”).

• 5*. Jones is obligated to act accordingly (i.e., to pay Smith five dollars).

The obligation that features in the conclusion of these two arguments might be nothing more than an apparent obligation. This can be made explicit by replacing “obligated” with “taken to be obligated.”

The obligation is genuine only if the relevant institutional rules are backed up by a moral principle such as Scanlon’s (1990) Principle of Fidelity. In a condensed form, the principle can be formulated as follows: If A provides B assurance that she will do x, in the absence of special justification, A must do x unless B consents to x’s not being done. A background assumption is that uttering a P-sentence is an institutional means to providing assurance. In light of this, the derivation of an actual rather than an apparent obligation proceeds as follows:

• 1**. Necessarily (p iff CA(p))

• 2**. CA (Anybody who utters a P-sentence thereby makes a promise)

• 3**. Anybody who utters a P-sentence thereby makes a promise.

• 4**. Anybody who makes a promise thereby assures the promisee that he will do as promised.

• 5**. Jones utters a P-sentence (“I hereby promise to pay you, Smith, five dollars”).

• 6**. Jones makes a promise (to pay Smith five dollars).

• 7**. Jones has assured Smith that he will do as promised (i.e., to pay Smith five dollars).

• 8**. If A provides B assurance that she will do X, in the absence of special justification, A must do X unless B consents to X’s not being done.

• 9**. Jones does not have a special justification not to do as promised, and Smith has not consented to Jones not doing so.

• 10**. Jones is obligated to do as promised (i.e., to pay Smith five dollars).

As 8** is a normative principle, this argument does not derive an obligation from is-statements only.

Notes

• 1. Statuses can also be multiply realizable within one and the same context. There are, for instance, one-dollar bills as well as one-dollar coins. This means that the basal conditions of a particular base rule can be disjunctive.

• 2. Here I abstract from the role of context.