Normativity

"Normative" redirects here. For other uses, see Normative (disambiguation).
"Prescriptive" redirects here. For other uses, see Prescription (disambiguation).

A prescriptive or normative statement is one that evaluates certain kinds of words, decisions, or actions as either correct or incorrect, or one that sets out guidelines for what a person "should" do.

Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A norm in this sense means a standard for evaluating or making judgments about behavior or outcomes. "Normative" is sometimes also used, somewhat confusingly, to mean relating to a descriptive standard: doing what is normally done or what most others are expected to do in practice. In this sense a norm is not evaluative, a basis for judging behavior or outcomes; it is simply a fact or observation about behavior or outcomes, without judgment. Many researchers in science, law, and philosophy try to restrict the use of the term "normative" to the evaluative sense and refer to the description of behavior and outcomes as positive, descriptive, predictive, or empirical.[1][2]

Normative has specialized meanings in different academic disciplines such as philosophy, social sciences, and law. In most contexts, normative means 'relating to an evaluation or value judgment.' Normative propositions tend to evaluate some object or some course of action. Normative content differs from descriptive content.[3]

Though philosophers disagree about how normativity should be understood; it has become increasingly common to understand normative claims as claims about reasons.[4] As Derek Parfit explains:

We can have reasons to believe something, to do something, to have some desire or aim, and to have many other attitudes and emotions, such as fear, regret, and hope. Reasons are given by facts, such as the fact that someone's finger-prints are on some gun, or that calling an ambulance would save someone's life. It is hard to explain the concept of a reason, or what the phrase 'a reason' means. Facts give us reasons, we might say, when they count in favour of our having some attitude, or our acting in some way. But 'counts in favour of' means roughly 'gives a reason for'. The concept of a reason is best explained by example. One example is the thought that we always have a reason to want to avoid being in agony.[5]

  1. ^ Bicchieri, Cristina (2005). The Grammar of Society:The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521574907.
  2. ^ Bicchieri, Cristina (2017). Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure, and Change Social Norms. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190622053.
  3. ^ Jarvis., Thomson, Judith (2008). Normativity. Chicago, Ill.: Open Court. ISBN 9780812696585. OCLC 227918828.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ Thomas, Scanlon (2014). Being realistic about reasons (First ed.). Oxford. ISBN 9780199678488. OCLC 862091562.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  5. ^ Parfit, Derek (2011). On what matters Volume one. Edited and Introduced by Samuel Scheffler. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191576706. OCLC 744616054.