Abstract

DUARTE, David. Conceptual Norms: Contrasting Theories. Isonomía [online]. 2023, n.58, pp.32-56.  Epub Aug 11, 2023. ISSN 1405-0218.  https://doi.org/10.5347/isonomia.58/2023.481.

Mainstream accounts of conceptual norms depict them as a specific kind of (sub) norms in as much as they establish a certain equivalence without making reference to an action-type, which implies also that they lack a deontic modalization. However, such non-prescriptive explanation raises some serious problems, mainly when it is assumed that the introduction of a conceptual norm into a normative system changes the content of the system. Those problems pave the way to contrast such explanation with a prescriptive alternative according to which conceptual norms are regulative in character, though with the peculiarity of addressing the mental action of qualifying something in accordance with a given equivalence. All-things-considered, from such contrast it seems to follow that the prescriptive explanation is less problematic than the non-prescriptive one.

Keywords : conceptual norms; prescriptiveness; mental actions; normative systems; explanatory power of theories.

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