It is often claimed that humans are rational, linguistic, cultural, or moral creatures. What these characterizations may all have in common is the more fundamental claim that humans are normative animals, in the sense that they are creatures whose lives are structured at a fundamental level by their relationships to norms. The various capacities singled out by discussion of rational, linguistic, cultural, or moral animals might then all essentially involve an orientation to obligations, permissions and prohibitions. And, if this is so, then perhaps it is a basic susceptibility, or proclivity to normative or deontic regulation of thought and behavior that enables humans to develop the various specific features of their life form. This volume of new essays investigates the claim that humans are essentially normative animals in this sense. The contributors do so by looking at the nature and relations of three types of norms, or putative norms-social, moral, and linguistic-and asking whether they might all be different expressions of one basic structure unique to humankind. These questions are posed by philosophers, primatologists, behavioral biologists, psychologists, linguists, and cultural anthropologists, who have collaborated on this topic for many years. The contributors are committed to the idea that understanding normativity is a two-way process, involving a close interaction between conceptual clarification and empirical research.
Author(s): Neil Roughley, Kurt Bayertz
Series: Foundations of Human Interaction
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 392
Tags: Sociolinguistics Arts & Humanities, Anthropological Linguistics Social Sciences, Anthropology: Social & Cultural Anthropology Arts & Humanities, Philosophy: Moral Philosophy, Social Norms, Normativity: Ethics, Standard Language
Cover......Page 1
Series......Page 3
The Normative Animal?......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
Foreword......Page 8
List of Contributors......Page 10
Part I......Page 12
1. Might We Be Essentially Normative Animals?......Page 14
2. On Social, Moral, and Linguistic Norms: The Contributions to This Volume......Page 49
Part II......Page 74
3. There Ought to Be Roots: Evolutionary Precursors of Social Norms and Conventions in Non-Human Primates......Page 76
4. On the Human Addiction to Norms: Social Norms and Cultural Universals of Normativity......Page 94
5. On the Identification and Analysis of Social Norms and the Heuristic Relevance of Deviant Behaviour......Page 112
6. On the Uniqueness of Human Normative Attitudes......Page 132
Part III......Page 148
7. The Evolution of Human Normativity: The Role of Prosociality and Reputation Management......Page 150
8. The Emergence of Moral Normativity......Page 165
9. Joint Activities and Moral Obligation......Page 188
10. The Development of Domains of Moral and Conventional Norms, Coordination in Decision-Making, and the Implications of Social Opposition......Page 206
11. Moral Obligation from the Outside In......Page 225
Part IV......Page 254
12. Language Evolution and Linguistic Norms......Page 256
13. The Normative Nature of Language......Page 276
14. Can There Be Linguistic Norms?......Page 290
15. The Normativity of Meaning Revisited......Page 306
16. Normative Guidance, Deontic Statuses, and the Normative
Animal Thesis......Page 332
References......Page 350
Name Index......Page 386
Subject Index......Page 388
