Unit: Philosophy

Dr. John Lawless, assistant professor of philosophy at Illinois State University, will present “Attitudes, Practices, and Social Norms” on Thursday, October 24, at 4 p.m. in 401A Stevenson Hall.

Providing an abstract view of the presentation, Lawless said, “What are social norms? On one common theory, social norms are rules that the members of a community widely and publicly accept. Proponents of this approach rarely defend the claim that social norms must enjoy widespread acceptance; when they do, they argue that only “accepted norms” are properly normative, or that it is theoretically fruitful to distinguish the rules that people accept from the rules they do not. Against “acceptance theories” of social norms, I argue that we should define social norms as the norms that define a community’s practices, whether individuals accept those norms or not. First, I argue that “accepted norms” is a muddled category that lumps together very different social phenomena. We gain little to no explanatory power by invoking this category. Second, I argue that acceptance theories cannot make sense of the norms that constitute distinctive social practices. It would be confused to ask whether people accept these norms or not. Rather, people simply confront these norms as they decide whether and how to participate in the relevant practices. Finally, I respond to the claim that only norms that people accept are properly normative, arguing that these claims depend on inadequate theories of normativity.”