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Recent philosophical debate about the meaning of knowledge claims has largely centred on the question of whether epistemic claims are plausibly thought to be context sensitive. The default assumption has been that sentences that attribute knowledge or justification (or whatever else is epistemic) have stable truth-conditions across different contexts of utterance, once any non-epistemic context sensitivity has been fixed. The contrary view is the contextualist view that such sentences do not have stable truth-conditions but can vary depending on the context of utterance. This debate manifestly presupposes that the meta-epistemological issue of accounting for the meaning of epistemic claims is to be settled by determining the truth-conditions of these claims. This chapter believes that this presupposition is undermotivated in light of two observations. First, many epistemologists see epistemic claims as evaluative or normative, in some sense. Second, in the meta-ethical debate most philosophers take alternatives to truth-conditional semantics, such as expressivism, as live options when it comes to evaluative or normative claims. As it turns out, the chapter proposes that expressivism doesn't provide a plausible account of normative concepts across the board. But considering it as an alternative in the meta-epistemological debate points the way to another alternative to truth-conditional semantics. This is a form of inferentialism. This chapter tries to motivate a move to epistemic inferentialism by showing how it overcomes worries about expressivism and interacts with plausible ideas about the social function epistemic claims play in our commerce with one another and the word.

What is it for a concept to be normative? Some possible answers are explored and rejected, among them that a concept is normative if it ascribes a normative property. The positive answer defended is that a concept is normative if it is in the right way associated with a normative use. Among issues discussed along the way are the nature of analyticity, and there being a notion of analyticity—what I call semantic analyticity—such that a statement can be analytic in this sense while failing to be true. Considerations regarding thick concepts and slurs are brought to bear on the issues that come up.

It is argued that the two dominant ways of reconstructing the Stoic conception of law—as a set of rules (rules‐interpretation) or as identified with the perfect decision‐making of the sage (prescriptive reason—interpretation)—miss important aspects of the theory. There is not enough textual evidence to show that the Stoics conceived of universal or general rules; even those texts which, by apparently mentioning exceptions, seem to imply the existence of rules are more plausibly interpreted without this assumption. The prescriptive reason—interpretation correctly captures key ideas of the Stoics' theory, but misses the substantive side of their conception of the law. A third interpretation is proposed that draws in crucial ways on the Stoics' substantive conception of reason. What the law commands is a life based on an understanding of what is valuable for human beings; the law thus is substantive without breaking down into rules—it is substantive in the same way in which perfect reason, which knows everything that is relevant to wisdom, is substantive.

A satisfactory interpretation of Nietzsche's complex writings should help us see whether a coherent and distinctive normative theory is to be found there. At least four serious problems confront the interpreter: Does Nietzsche's perspectivism about truth result in a kind of relativism, precluding the seemingly absolute claims about the superiority of certain beings, values, or ways of life for which he is famous? Nietzsche's writings are full of imperatives, but can an action-guiding normative theory be formulated without incorporating the deontic concepts and associated idea of a free or autonomous will that Nietzsche dismissed? Does Nietzsche's naturalism preclude the idea of finding genuine values in the world? And, if his theory is founded upon value — say, nobility, health, strength, knowledge, and aesthetic excellence — how could it also be the case that, as Nietzsche says, we invent or create our values? Using examples and arguments, and drawing upon an idea of attunement to — appreciative realization through life of — value as the basis for action-guidance, it is possible to see how these four problems can be overcome in a coherent, perhaps even plausible, way. However, no deep expertise on Nietzsche underwrites this paper, so the interpretation is offered on a speculative basis. It would make sense of some of Nietzsche's most prominent claims, and also of his distinctive style of philosophy, and his notion that ‘eternal recurrence’ is an appropriate test of a life.

This chapter discusses the concept of law enforcement. The basic concept of law enforcement comprises all territorial and extraterritorial measures taken by a State to vertically impose public security, law, and order or to otherwise exercise its authority or power over individuals in any place or manner whatsoever. The normative paradigm of law enforcement comprises the rules, principles, and standards of international law, which govern the conduct of law enforcement activities and determine the lawfulness of such activities. In terms of substance, the normative paradigm of law enforcement essentially includes the totality of international rules, which balance the collective interest in enforcing public security, law and order against the conflicting interest in protecting individual rights and liberties.

What is it for a property to be normative? Some possible answers are explored and rejected in this chapter, among them that a property is normative if it is ascribed by some normative concept. A positive claim defended is that a property is normative if and only if it is ascribed by some concept whose reference is determined by normative role. Along the way, the supposed connection between normativity and motivation is addressed. Theoretically important distinctions are drawn relating to the idea of normative role determining reference. Normative role can determine reference either fully or partially. Also, the possibility of reference magnetism complicates how one should think about some of these things.

Ethicists struggle to take reductive views seriously. Influential proponents of reductive views themselves admit as much. Ethicists also have trouble conceiving of some supervenience failures. Understanding why ethicists resist reductive views and why ethicists have trouble conceiving of some supervenience failures shores up new evidence for various theses about the distinctiveness of our use of normative concepts. This chapter builds on previous work to make a cumulative case for the view that what it is to use a normative concept is to use an unanalyzable natural-cognitive concept that is related to noncognitive elements of our psychology.

Many philosophers working on normative issues follow the ‘Reasons First’ program. According to this program, the concept of a ‘normative reason’ for an action or an attitude is the most fundamental normative concept, and all other normative and evaluative concepts can be defined in terms of this fundamental concept. This paper criticizes the foundational assumptions of this program. In fact, there are many different concepts that can be expressed by the term ‘reason’ in English. The best explanation of the data relating to these concepts is that they can all be defined in terms of explanatory concepts and other normative or evaluative notions: for example, in one sense, a ‘reason’ for you to go is a fact that helps to explain why you ought to go, or why it is good for you to go. This implies that none of the concepts expressed by ‘reason’ is fundamental.

This chapter offers an analysis of the authoritatively normative concept PRACTICAL OUGHT that appeals to the constitutive norms for the activity of non-arbitrary selection. It argues that this analysis permits an attractive and substantive explanation of what the distinctive normative authority of this concept amounts to, while also explaining why a clear statement of what such authority amounts to has been so elusive in the recent literature. The account given is contrasted with more familiar constitutivist theories, and briefly shows how it answers “schmagency”-style objections to constitutivist explanations of normativity. Finally, the chapter explains how the account offered here can help realists, error theorist, and fictionalists address central challenges to their views.

This chapter is about Triviality Objection. It first examines normative concepts and natural properties, including the concept of the natural property that makes acts right and the concept of being blameworthy. It then considers the Naturalists' use of analogies with scientific discoveries, such as the discovery that water is H₂O or that heat is molecular kinetic energy, and argues that such analogies partly fail. It also tackles the Non-Analytical Naturalism belief that any true normative claim states some fact that is both normative and natural. If this fact were natural, it could also be stated by some non-normative claim. If these claims stated the same fact, they would give us the same information. Such claims could not state facts that are both normative and natural. When we say that we ought to act in some way, we are making a substantive claim, which might state a positive substantive normative fact. If these forms of Naturalism were true, such claims would not be substantive, but would be trivial. So these forms of Naturalism cannot be true.

This chapter examines the role that is played in the debate on what is and what is not the adequate theory of function, by the claim that “function” is an inherently normative concept. It explores exactly how the theories that claim to be able to account for the normativity of function go about doing this. This chapter shows that the proponents of proper function (PF) -type theories do not treat their preferred concept of “function” as being inherently normative. It suggests that systems-with-a-design (SD) theory's central notion of “type fixation” be given a stronger naturalistic footing.

This chapter defends a pluralist understanding of species on which a normative species concept is viable and can support natural goodness evaluations. The central question here is thus: Since organisms are to be evaluated as members of their species, how does a proper understanding of species affect the feasibility of natural goodness evaluations? Philippa Foot has argued for a form of natural goodness evaluation in which living things are evaluated by how well fitted they are for flourishing as members of their species, in ways characteristic of their species. She has further argued that assessments of moral goodness in humans are of the same evaluative form. However, natural goodness evaluations and, by extension, the natural goodness approach, do not garner justification in virtue of employing a scientifically privileged conception of species. The natural goodness approach is only justified given particular metaethical and normative commitments that are independent of naturalism, since the approach does not depend upon naturalism alone.

Scholars remain divided over the exact meaning of the idea of validity, despite its central role in Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law. Ross has pointed out that Kelsen faces serious difficulties owing to his use of the concept of validity qua binding force. Carlos Santiago Nino returns to this issue, maintaining that Kelsen employs a normative concept of validity. Nino’s attitude towards this is diametrically opposed to Ross’s, who maintained that the concept of validity qua binding force should be eliminated from legal theory and, in particular, from Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law. Nino believes that the only correct interpretation of Kelsen is that which stems from acknowledging that his concept of validity is normative, not descriptive. This chapter analyses the relevant aspects of Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law, seeking to determine the exact role played by the normative concept of validity.

This chapter discusses the claim that, if it were true that we ought to do something just when this act would maximize net pleasure, the concepts ought and would maximize net pleasure would refer to the same property. If these properties were one and the same, that would both tell us what we ought to do and explain why we ought to do these things. The chapter shows how this claim is not a defence of normative naturalism. On the contrary, such a claim helps non-naturalists by suggesting how these people could explain and defend their view. Hence, even if normative concepts referred in the co-extensional sense to natural properties, these concepts can be used to think irreducibly normative thoughts, which might be about irreducibly normative truths.

This chapter discusses the convergence claim. This claim argues that, if everyone knew all of the relevant non-normative facts, used the same normative concepts, understood and carefully reflected on the relevant arguments, and was not affected by any distorting influence, we would nearly all have similar normative beliefs. It also discusses some counterpoints to attempts to reconcile some of Friedrich Nietzsche's claims with what most of us believe. Though Nietzsche sometimes denies that suffering is in itself bad, and even suggests that suffering may be in itself good, that was not, in most of his life, what Nietzsche believed. The chapter goes on to discuss further arguments for and against the Convergence Claim.

This chapter considers whether there are any limits to conceptual engineering, developing the idea that there are no safe spaces from conceptual change. First, it considers Chalmers’s argument for bedrock concepts. It argues that Chalmers’s claim that there is an asymmetric structure in the space of disputes is an (implausible) empirical claim. Second, it considers Eklund’s claim to the effect that our thinnest normative concepts are irreplaceable, and this is a limit to conceptual engineering, and shows that Eklund doesn’t establish this. It ends by revisiting some old worries, defending the choice of the term ‘conceptual engineering’, and responding to the claim that by making conceptual engineering inscrutable and out of control, it has been debunked rather than defended. However, conceptual engineering is very hard for us to do, but so is (almost) everything that is important to us.

This chapter reassesses the credentials of the book's central new idea concerning practical reason. That idea is of the importance of exclusionary reasons for the understanding of some rules and related normative concepts. The chapter first discusses the notion of an exclusionary reason and then argues that not only do many people believe that there are exclusionary reasons, but they are sometimes right to think so because some exclusionary reasons exist. It then turns to the connection between exclusionary reasons and rules, promises, decisions, authoritative directives, and others. Generally, people conform to a reason for a certain act if they perform that act in the circumstance in which that reason is a reason for its performance. Obviously, people who conform to a reason do not act against it. Other things being equal, they are not irrational. Other things need not be equal. Their reasons for action may have been misguided or irrational.