Explaining the Normative (PDF)

Normativity is what gives reasons their force, makes words
meaningful, and makes rules and laws binding. It is present
whenever we use such terms as 'correct,' 'ought,'
'must,' and the language of obligation, responsibility, and
logical compulsion. Yet normativists, the philosophers committed to
this idea, admit that the idea of a non-causal normative realm and
a body of normative objects is spooky. Explaining the Normative is
the first systematic, historically grounded critique of
normativism. It identifies the standard normativist pattern of
argument, and shows how this pattern depends on circularities,
assumptions about the unique correctness of preferred descriptions,
problematic transcendental arguments, and regress arguments that
end in mysteries.

The book considers in detail a paradigm case: legal normativity
as constructed by Hans Kelsen. This case exemplifies the problems
with normativist arguments. But it also shows how normativism was
constructed as an alternative to ordinary social science
explanation. The normativist argument is that social science
explanations themselves are forced to rely on normative
conceptsÑminimally, on normative rationality and on a
normative view of 'concepts' themselves.

Empathic understanding of the reasoning and meanings of others,
however, can solve the regress problems about meaning and
rationality that are central to the appeal of normativism. This
account has no need for a parallel normative world, and has a
surprising and revealing lineage in the history of philosophy, as
well as a basis in neuroscience.