The Varieties of Normativity: an Essay On Social Ontology

VII. Conclusion

The normative principle to the effect thatto bring about an evil outcome intentionally is never less blameworthy than to bring it about unintentionally is in no sense analogous to the principle that in chess bishops moves diagonally. For in the rules of chess are open to deliberation. One could choose or invite others not to play chess; one could propose that chess be played differently; and thus one could affect the way in which the soft normativity of chess plays itself out in reality. One cannot, in contrast, refuse to accept or propose adjustments in the normativity of intending.

There is, then, normativity in intentional states themselves, before they give rise to speech acts. But this is still not the end of the story as concerns the manifold varieties of normativity. Thus we still cannot explain why murder is wrong. And we still do not yet have the means to do justice to those features of normativity turning on virtue, character traits and like phenomena, which are the fare of neo-Aristotelian ethics. Our discussion of intentions is meant simply to establish that there are provinces in the kingdom of normativity that have nothing to do with conventional rules. Surely some of these provinces affect the structure of social ontology: it is rather hard to accept that all social reality is a matter of soft normativity, yet it is a view of this sort with which Searle’s otherwise groundbreaking work on social ontology is still stuck.