Ontology of social and legal norms
propositions and social acceptance
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30827/acfs.v60i.33125Keywords:
Social and Legal Norms, Ontology, Propositions, Acceptance, RepresentationalismAbstract
This paper aims to address the ontology of social norms, including legal norms. It advocates a propositional view, according to which norms are propositions that exist by virtue of acceptance facts. In the first part, different usages of “norm” will be distinguished to clarify that my focus will be on the prescriptive genre. In the second part, several proposals regarding the ontology of prescriptive norms will be introduced and critically examined. In the third part, I will attempt to defend the view that norms are propositions serving as cognitive instruments, whose prescriptive nature is to be understood in terms of their fallible but representational structure concerning genuine practical requirements. This approach will enable my propositional account to accommodate error cases in norm-following. Finally, I will argue that propositional contents count as norms by virtue of acceptance facts— which may vary in nature, be explicit or implicit, occur at different levels, and admit other facts as partial explanations of individual norms.
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