Abstract
Stephen Turner’s anti-normativism is based on the idea that the normative can be explained away by social science. Exploiting the idea fostered by the sociology of scientific knowledge that reasons can be understood naturalistically as the causes of the beliefs of scientists and endorsing a non-normative conception of rationality, Turner has argued that normative accounts are better understood as “Good Bad Theories” (GBT). GBT are understood as false accounts that play a role in social coordination like magical or religious rituals in primitive societies (e.g. Tabu and the like). According to Turner, “norms,” “obligations,” “reasons,” and “commitments” are like Tabu and can be explained away as GBT. Hence, Turner expected normative accounts to disappear completely in a fully disenchanted world. Turner focuses on the idea, widespread among philosophers, that the normative does not reduce to the causal: his main claim is that social science succeeds in the reduction of the normative in causal terms, overcoming normative/causal dualism. Furthermore, this success is presented as creating a serious challenge for normativism. By focusing on certain (supposedly normative) features of beliefs like those involved in belief change dynamics, I will point out some interesting implications and problems for Turner’s anti-normativism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
These go by the name of “normativism.” As Jaroslav Peregrin wrote, normativism according to Turner “includes [Christine] Korsgaard, [Onora] O’Neill, [Saul] Kripke, David Lewis, [Paul] Boghossian, [Wilfrid] Sellars, [John] McDowell, [Robert] Brandom, [John] Haugeland, [Joseph] Rouse, etc.” [15, p. 64]. To this list we can surely add Kant, Neokantianism, Joseph Raz, Hans Kelsen, and Peter Winch. See Turner [27, chs. 2–4].
- 2.
- 3.
As Maksymilian Del Mar nicely put it: “[a] […] tendency to posit a privileged description of that which needs to be explained, with the effect that the explanation too is privileged” [9, p. 307].
- 4.
In principle, this approach can also be applied to the formal sciences, thus paving the way for a conventionalist explanation of logical and mathematical validity. Hence, it can serve as the basis for new conventionalist and naturalistic programs in the formal sciences. Furthermore, such an approach could be considered a promising option for current naturalistic trends in philosophy of logic.
- 5.
This entails believing that certain rules are in force.
- 6.
The problem I am most interested in is the putative connection between normative language and normative facts. In a broader context, a defense of the peculiarities of normative language would take much more space, involving, for example, its prescriptive character and an account of imperatives.
- 7.
Peter Olen has nicely emphasized how this non-cognitivist trajectory can be a valuable alternative to the conceptions of normativity criticized by Turner. See [13, pp. 141, 148].
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
Arguably, we do not have a single MI, but rather many MIs, as many human cultures can count as MIs. Thus, in a sense, we are confronted with an entire bunch of MIs in which we find different images of humanity and the world (along with different norms, institutions, etc.). This is true in an important sense, but not enough to weaken Sellars’ point, because Sellars explicitly worried about this possibility and conceived of the MI as an idealization of the common traits of all the MIs. Rather, this is an idealization that is explicitly modeled on Weber’s ideal types, and thus, it is spot on in this context. See [24, p. 5]. Many thanks to Stephen Turner for highlighting this worry.
- 11.
These inferences are called “material” or “materially good” since they are good not only in virtue of inference rules but also in virtue of the content of the concepts involved. Thus, the inference “if Fido is a dog, then Fido is a mammal” is good thanks to the concepts “dog” and “mammal.”
- 12.
Even though Turner does not make this claim in a sufficiently explicit way. It can be mostly inferred from what he says about everything that is apart from empirical facts.
- 13.
Rather, I would say that normativity amounts to a kind of technology that we developed over millennia.
- 14.
Deflationary insights about truth push me in the general direction of denying that truth is a norm. However, I think the point I am highlighting here can also be appreciated by those who endorse different views on truth.
- 15.
I am aware that this sounds a bit like a tu quoque argument. This may depend on the fact that functionalist accounts are generally understood in naturalistic terms; thus, it would be a way to say that naturalistic accounts, if they are functionalist, have the ability to embed normativity. There is surely something to such a notion. However, the naturalistic interpretation of functionalism is not mandatory, as we find varieties of functionalism that are explicitly normative rather than naturalistic. Sellars’ functionalist semantics is a case in point [25].
- 16.
AGM is an acronym that stands for Carlos Alchourrón, Peter Gärdenfors, and David Makinson.
- 17.
See also [2].
- 18.
This is a slippery terrain, though. Studies in the psychology of reasoning have shown evidence of the generalized irrationality of agents, which is often exploited to undermine the normative nature of rationality and reasoning. A pioneering study here has been surely [31]. Turner seems to be aware of this and appears to be ready to endorse some conventionalism about logical and mathematical validity. See [12] for a wider overview on the debate about the rationality of reasoning.
- 19.
I am not ruling out the possibility of a future scientific explanation of these features and dynamics, but just highlighting what is our current way to understanding them. Furthermore, it should be noted that consistency is open to sociological explanations as well, so sheer conventionalism turns out to be on the table also from this point of view.
- 20.
Many thanks to Davide Fazio for suggesting this interpretation.
- 21.
As inferences can be both valid/invalid and sound/unsound, the notion of inference seems to point in the direction of normativism. This is also the same for causal inference, which can be valid and sound (or invalid and unsound) along with other inferences.
- 22.
This is modified version of an example provided by Robert Brandom. See for example [4, p. 169].
- 23.
See [22], and also [14] and [19] for a recent overview. Even though we must notice that Turner in recent years is at work to recruit cognitive neuroscience in the attempt to reconsider folk-psychological talk more in general (so, this is an ongoing endeavor). See especially [29] and what Turner says about the “verstehen bubble.”
- 24.
This is an urgency already emerged even in the normativist camp. As Robert Brandom wrote: “Kant’s transcendental machinery—the distinction between Understanding and Reason, the free noumenal self expressed somehow as a causally constrained phenomenal self, and so on—can no longer secure this distinction [between the Realm of Nature and the Realm of Freedom] for us. It is just too mysterious as an explanation of freedom” [3, p. 187]. The awareness of the troubles connected with transcendental philosophy is one of the strongest motivations for various forms of pragmatism about norms.
References
Adair-Toteff, C. (ed.): Stephen Turner and the Philosophy of Social Sciences. Brill Rodopi, Leiden (2021)
Alchourrón, C., Gärdenfors, P., Makinson, D.: On the Logic of Theory Change: Partial Meet Contraction and Revision Functions. J. Symb. Log. 50, 510–530 (1985)
Brandom, R.: Freedom and Constraint by Norms. Am. Philos. Q. 16(3), 187–196 (1979)
Brandom, R.: Making It Explicit. Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) (1994)
Carnap, R.: Logical Foundations of Probability. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1950)
Christias, D.: A Sellarsian Approach to the Normativism-Antinormativism Controversy. Philos. Soc. Sci. 45(2), 143–175 (2015)
Christias, D.: Towards a Reformed Liberal and Scientific Naturalism. Dialectica 73(4), 507–534 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1111/1746-8361.12279
Cortes, M., Sigwart, G.: Explication. In: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2018). https://iep.utm.edu/explicat/
Del Mar, M.: Normativism, Anti-normativism, and Humanist Pragmatism. Hum. Stud. (33), 305–323 (2010)
Glüer, K., Wikforss, Å.: The Normativity of Meaning and Content. In: Zalta, E. N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2018). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meaning-normativity/
Hansson, S. O.: Logic of Belief Revision. In: Zalta, E. N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2017). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-belief-revision/#ReprBeliChan
Mercier, H., Sperber, D.: The Enigma of Reason. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) (2017)
Olen, P.: What Does Normativity Explain? In: Adair-Toteff, C. (ed.) Stephen Turner and the Philosophy of Social Sciences, pp. 133–149. Brill Rodopi, Leiden (2021)
O’Shea, J.: What Is the Myth of the Given? Synthese 199, 10543–567 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03258-6
Peregrin, J.: Social Normativism. In: Risjord, M. (ed.) Normativity and Naturalism in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, pp. 60–77. Routledge, New York (2016)
Price, H.: Naturalism Without Mirrors. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2011)
Price, H. (ed.): Expressivism, Pragmatism, and Representationalism. Cambridge University Press, New York (2013)
Risjord, M. (ed.): Normativity and Naturalism in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Routledge, New York (2016)
Salis, P.: The Given and the Hard Problem of Content. Phenomenol. Cogn. Sci. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-022-09843-5
Schwitzgebel, E.: Belief. In: Zalta, E. N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2019). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/
Sellars, W.: Inference and Meaning. Mind 62(247), 313–338 (1953)
Sellars, W.: Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) (1956[1997])
Sellars, W.: Counterfactuals, Dispositions, and the Causal Modalities. In: Feigl, H., Scriven, M., Maxwell, G. (eds.) Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. II: Concepts, Theories, and the Mind-Body Problem, pp. 225–308. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (1957)
Sellars, W.: Science, Perception, and Reality. Humanities Press, New York (1963)
Sellars, W.: Meaning as Functional Classification. Synthese 27, 417–437 (1974)
Tappolet, C.: Mixed Inferences: A Problem for Pluralism About Truth Predicates. Analysis LVII 3, 209–210 (1997)
Turner, S.: Explaining the Normative. Polity Press, Cambridge (2010)
Turner, S.: The Naturalistic Moment in Normativism. In: Risjord, M. (ed.) Normativity and Naturalism in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, pp. 9–27. Routledge, New York (2016)
Turner, S.: Cognitive Science and the Social. A Primer. Routledge, New York (2018)
Turner, S.: Response: Normativity, Practices, and the Substrate. In: Adair-Toteff, C. (ed.) Stephen Turner and the Philosophy of Social Sciences, pp. 243–266. Brill Rodopi, Leiden (2021)
Tversky, A., Kahneman, D.: Extensional vs. Intuitive Judgement: The Conjunction Fallacy in Probability Judgement. Psychol. Rev. 90, 293–315 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.90.4.293
Acknowledgements
Early versions of this work were presented at the following conferences: “Why and How We Give and Ask for Reasons” held at the University of Hradec Králové (Czech Republic) in October 2021; “ALOPHIS Seminars” held at the University of Cagliari (Italy) in March 2022; and “UNILOG 2022,” for the workshop “The Logic of Social Practices II,” held in Crete (Greece) in April 2022. I wish to thank Vinicio Busacchi, Francesca Ervas, Davide Fazio, Roberto Giuntini, Jeremy Koons, Hilary Kornblith, Pier Luigi Lecis, Francesco Paoli, Jaakko Reinikainen and Stephen Turner for many valuable comments and suggestions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Salis, P. (2023). On Turner’s Anti-Normativism. In: Giovagnoli, R., Lowe, R. (eds) The Logic of Social Practices II. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 68. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39113-2_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39113-2_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-39112-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-39113-2
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)