Normativity
Normativity concerns the standards of what people ought to do, believe, or value. It is a quality of rules, judgments, or concepts that prescribe how things should be or what individuals may, must, or must not do. Normative claims express what ought to be the case, such as "you should not smoke". They contrast with descriptive claims about what is the case, such as "you smoked yesterday". Normativity shapes many everyday activities, such as decision-making, evaluating outcomes, criticizing others, and justifying actions.
Researchers discuss many types of normativity. Practical normativity is about what to do, while theoretical normativity concerns what to believe. Deontic normativity deals with what is allowed, required, or forbidden, whereas evaluative normativity addresses the values underlying normative assessments. Objective normativity encompasses requirements that do not depend on personal views, in contrast to subjective normativity, which is about standards relative to subjective perspectives. A normative assessment is if it is partial by only taking certain aspects into account, unlike all-things-considered judgments, which factor in all relevant aspects. Other distinctions are based on the domain of assessment, such as moral, social, legal, and linguistic norms. Some categories may overlap, and there are academic disagreements about whether all these types are genuine forms of normativity.
Various theories about the nature and sources of normativity have been proposed. Realists assert that there are objective facts about what is right and wrong, a view rejected by anti-realists. Naturalists and non-naturalists discuss whether normative facts are part of the empirical domain studied by the natural sciences. Cognitivists and non-cognitivists debate whether normative judgments can be true or false. Reductionists seek to explain normative concepts through non-normative ones, while primitivists deny that this is possible. Reason-based and value-based views disagree about whether normativity is ultimately grounded in reasons or values. Other theories address the authoritative force of normativity, its relation to the mind, and the sources of normative knowledge.
Several fields of inquiry study normative phenomena. In philosophy, ethics addresses practical normativity while epistemology deals with theoretical normativity. Psychology examines normative cognitions or how norms are learned, practiced, and sanctioned. Sociology and anthropology analyze social norms as shared and enforced rules that regulate communal behavior and vary across cultures. Linguistics deals with standards of correct language use, while law addresses the legitimacy of legal systems. Other related fields include economics, medicine, and neuroscience.
Definition
Normativity is a quality of concepts, judgments, or principles that prescribe how things ought to be. As a feature of everything that should be, it encompasses the standards or reasons that guide or justify actions and beliefs. In a slightly different sense, normativity can also refer to the capacity to establish and modify norms. Normative statements contrast with descriptive statements, which report what is the case rather than what should be the case. For example, the sentence "you should not smoke" is normative because it expresses a norm and prescribes a course of action. The sentence "you smoked yesterday", by contrast, is descriptive since it merely states a fact.Normativity is a pervasive phenomenon in everyday life that occurs when evaluating or criticizing others and when attempting to justify one's own actions. Similarly, it is involved in practical deliberation when deciding what to do next and in theoretical reasoning when assessing whether the available evidence supports a belief. Normativity is relevant to many domains, including morality, law, politics, language, and the human sciences. Philosophers debate whether it is a unified phenomenon that applies equally to all of these cases or a heterogeneous collection of related ideas whose precise definition varies with context and domain.
Normative claims can be analyzed in terms of their content, such as a rule that should be followed, and the authority or normative force they carry. For example, some normative reasons merely favor one course of action over another, while others strictly demand a specific conduct. In either case, a normative reason does not coerce compliance: individuals may act otherwise out of ignorance or against their better judgment. Accordingly, there can be a difference between what a person desires or intends and what they normatively should do.
Normativity is closely related to norms, understood as general principles of how individuals should act or think. However, the term norm also has meanings not directly related to normativity. For example, a statistical norm is a statement about what is typical or average, such as the average height of adult men, without implying that things should be this way. Similarly, normativity is distinguished from mere regularities or common practices, such as a habit of eating dinner at a particular time. There are many normative concepts, such as right and wrong, good and bad, rational and irrational, justified and unjustified, and permitted and obligated.
The word normativity originates in the Latin term norma, meaning or. It gave rise to the French word normatif, which entered English as the term normative in the 19th century. The word normativity was coined in the 1930s as a technical term in academic discourse. The study of normativity has its roots in antiquity as discussions of different types of normative requirements. Plato and Aristotle examined the norms of moral conduct and the good life, as well as standards of knowledge and reasoning. In modern philosophy, David Hume investigated the contrast between normative and non-normative phenomena, arguing that one cannot deduce what ought to be from what is, a contrast later pursued by G. E. Moore. Immanuel Kant analyzed the normative domains of theoretical knowledge, practical morality, and aesthetic judgment. By raising the question of their underlying unity, he inspired subsequent philosophers to seek systematic principles grounding and connecting these domains. Edmund Husserl in the 1930s and Georges Canguilhem in the 1940s introduced normativity as a technical term for the power of creating and changing norms, with Husserl focusing on the realm of ideas while Canguilhem explored functional norms and pathologies of organisms. Diverse theories of the nature, sources, unity, and reality of normative phenomena were later developed by J. L. Mackie, T. M. Scanlon, Derek Parfit, Simon Blackburn, and Christine Korsgaard.
Types
Several types of normativity are discussed in the academic literature distinguished by domain, content, authority, or perspective. Some distinctions may overlap or may be combined to form more specific subtypes. There are theoretical disagreements about whether only some types are genuine forms of normativity and whether some kinds are more fundamental than others.Practical and theoretical
Practical normativity addresses conduct or what people should decide, intend, and do. It is interested in the standards of right action and the reasons that favor one course of action over another. It contrasts with theoretical or epistemic normativity, which governs how people should think or what they should believe. Theoretical normativity concerns mental states and belief-formation processes related to truth and knowledge. For example, the sentence "she should stop drinking" belongs to practical normativity, whereas the sentence "he should not believe the rumor without evidence" belongs to theoretical normativity.These two types are often studied separately, with the field of ethics focusing on the practical side and the field of epistemology focusing on the theoretical side. Nonetheless, there are many parallels and interactions. For example, beliefs may influence what should be done, as when someone should buy eggs because they intend to bake a cake and believe that eggs are required. Similarly, practical consequences can influence belief norms. For instance, a person may be justified to believe that their bank is open on Saturday if it concerns a minor matter, but not if they risk losing their house by missing a mortgage payment.
In some cases, practical and theoretical normativity may conflict, raising the question of how or whether this type of dilemma can be resolved. For example, if there is strong evidence in favor of adopting a negative opinion about a friend, theoretical normativity may require doing so while practical normativity rooted in friendship may demand granting them the benefit of doubt. Similar dilemmas can arise in cases where violating epistemic norms by believing a falsehood has positive practical consequences.
Deontic and evaluative
Deontic normativity covers norms that directly apply to right thought and action. These norms are action-guiding by telling individuals what to do and demanding certain forms of conduct, expressed through concepts such as right, wrong, obligation, and permission. Evaluative normativity, by contrast, is about values or what is good. It describes what is worthy of approval, expressed through concepts such as good, bad, praiseworthy, and virtuous.These two forms of normativity are closely related and often overlap, as when an action is right because it is good or has good consequences. However, they are not identical and can come apart. For instance, some value considerations cannot guide actions because they are beyond anyone's control. Several theories of the relation between deontic and evaluative normativity have been suggested, including the idea that one is more fundamental and can be used to define the other. Understood in a narrow sense, normativity is sometimes limited to deontic normativity.