Notes
Alternative Label
History Note
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The disagreement is not about:
whether sentient practice exists
whether evolution or development matters
It’s about:
What counts as normativity?
JWK
This is where the sidelined discussion on determinism enters the picture. I have a non-reductionist, supervenient-emergentist view of nature. Terrence Deacon is an ally here, I think. Also George F R Ellis, though he has a tendency to go off onto tangents.
Though I am a naturalist, I don't follow Sean Carroll in viewing emergence as a "way of talking". That is too close to Brandom, Rorty, and Huw Price.
I think volcanoes, stars, and whirlpools for example are ontological existence causal systems that cannot be reduced to basic physics. Where I think I agree with Carroll is that all the higher level emergence is supervenient on basic forces of physics. But the ontological cause happens at the system level of star, volcano, glacier, river, atmospheric storm, etc.
So emergence doesn't introduce any new basic forces. But friction, heat transfer, pressure, orbital paths, centers of gravity expand the notion of "causal closure". To put it poetically, the star moves the atoms, the atoms don't move the star.
Where Terrence Deacon comes in with abiogenesis. Non-living nature exhibits structural functional organization in a non-reductive way, but it is non-normative. The first norm is survival. Without life there are no norms. Survival emerges (details to be determined, but generally shape is understood). Further norms like flourishing and sociality emerge from survival.
The next great boundary is the emergence of sapient practice. Truth is a norm that is co-evolves with the evolution of fully grammatical language. Legitimacy co-evolves with the evolution of cultural grounded social institutions.
ChatGPT
You’ve now got a very clear backbone: a **layered, emergentist account of normativity** tied to real transitions in nature. And you’re right that bringing in emergence (in a robust, not merely “as-if”) sense is what lets you resist both reductionism _and_ discursive idealism.
Let me organize and stress-test what you’re proposing, especially in relation to people like Terrence Deacon, George F. R. Ellis, and Sean Carroll.
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1) Brandom: norms as socially articulated commitments
For Brandom:
norms = **statuses** (commitment, entitlement)
instituted by **social practices**
articulated through **giving and asking for reasons**
So:
> normativity = participation in a rule-governed, discursive game
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Why this feels too narrow to you
Because it implies:
no normativity in:
perception
skill
animal cognition
no normativity without:
language
explicit accountability
You’re resisting that by saying:
> norms are prior to, and govern, those practices—not created by them
That’s a deep disagreement about _ontological priority_.
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2) Pragmatism (Peirce / Lewis via Misak)
Charles Sanders Peirce
C. I. Lewis
Cheryl Misak
This is much closer to your stance.
Key idea:
truth is a **norm regulating inquiry**
not reducible to:
consensus
utility
immediate success
Misak’s reading emphasizes:
> inquiry aims at truth, even though we never fully secure it
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Where you extend this
You’re adding:
> the norm of truth operates already at the level of sentient corroboration
That’s not explicit in Peirce, but it’s a natural extension.
You’re also pluralizing:
truth is one norm among others:
survival
flourishing
coherence (implicitly)
legitimacy
So you’re building:
> a **multi-norm constraint field**
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3) Enactivism: norms as viability constraints
Francisco Varela
Evan Thompson
Here, “norm” is not linguistic at all.
Norm = viability condition
organisms distinguish:
viable vs non-viable states
behavior is guided by:
maintaining organization
adaptive success
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Strong overlap with your view
Your list:
maps directly onto:
> viability norms
And crucially:
> these norms are _not chosen_—they are constitutive of being a living system
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Where you go further
Enactivism often avoids:
You insist:
> truth is also a norm, not reducible to viability
That’s an important addition.
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4) Predictive processing: norms as error minimization
Karl Friston
Here:
systems minimize prediction error
“good” = reduced surprise
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How normativity appears here
Implicitly:
better models → lower error
worse models → higher error
So:
> normativity = optimization criterion
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Your likely objection
This risks collapsing:
truth → successful prediction
i.e., instrumentalism again
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Your improvement
You would say:
error minimization = one **dimension (correspondence-like)**
but must be constrained by:
coherence
broader norms (truth, legitimacy, meaning)
So you resist:
> reducing normativity to a single metric
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5) Developmental psychology: norms as learning constraints
Alison Gopnik
Children:
distinguish:
correct vs incorrect
expected vs violated
revise models
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Key implication
Normativity shows up as:
> sensitivity to error, correction, and improvement—before language
This strongly supports your position that:
> normativity is not coextensive with discursive reasoning
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6) Ecological psychology: norms as attunement
James J. Gibson
environment offers **affordances**
organisms are more or less **attuned**
So:
> normativity = better or worse attunement to real structure
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This maps onto your “correspondence”
not representational accuracy in a strict sense
but **fit between organism and world**
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7) Pulling this together: your emerging theory of norms
Across these frameworks, we get different models:
|Framework|What is a norm?|
|---|---|
|Brandom|discursive commitment|
|Pragmatism|regulative ideal of inquiry|
|Enactivism|viability constraint|
|Predictive processing|error minimization|
|Developmental psych|learning constraint|
|Ecological psych|attunement|
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Your synthesis (this is the key insight)
You are implicitly proposing:
> norms are **multi-level constraints that govern the evaluation of outcomes across biological, cognitive, and discursive systems**
More specifically:
**foundation** → viability / embodiment
**correspondence** → attunement / prediction success
**coherence** → systemic compatibility
**truth** → regulative norm of inquiry
**legitimacy** → institutional stability
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8) Your definition of norm (important)
You said:
> a norm is a pre-suppositional condition that governs behaviour and sorts good outcomes from bad
That’s quite powerful, but also raises a key issue:
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The challenge
What distinguishes:
from
a **mere constraint or regularity**?
Example:
gravity “sorts” outcomes (you fall or don’t)
but we don’t usually call it a norm
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You likely want something like:
> norms are constraints that are _evaluatively loaded_ within a system of activity
i.e.:
not just causal
but tied to:
success/failure
better/worse
improvement
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9) Your “apophatic” remark (very interesting)
You said norms are:
> meta-linguistic, even apophatic
That suggests:
norms are not fully capturable in propositions
they are **conditions of intelligibility and evaluation**
This is very close to:
Kant (conditions of possibility)
but also:
later Wittgenstein (rules shown in practice)
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10) Why Brandom still attracts you
You noted this insightfully:
> Brandom naturalizes norms, but makes them overly rational
Exactly.
He gives you:
seriousness about normativity
historical depth
anti-reductionism
But:
he locates normativity too late (at language)
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Bottom line
You are converging on a position where:
> Norms are not created by discourse, nor reducible to biology, but are **multi-level constraints that govern the evaluation of activity across organism, cognition, and society**.
And:
> Truth is one such norm—irreducible, not constructed, but approached through practices of corroboration.
This lets you say, against Brandom:
giving and asking for reasons is **in the service of norms**
not the **source of normativity itself**
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If you want to push this further, the next crucial step is:
👉 to give a **clean criterion that distinguishes norms from mere causal constraints**
—that’s the point at which your view becomes fully defensible against both:
reductive naturalism
and discursive idealism.
1) Your core metaphysical picture (cleaned up)
You’re proposing a **stratified ontology with supervenience + real emergence**:
Level 1: Physical systems (non-normative)
stars, volcanoes, rivers, storms
real causal organization at system level
not reducible _in practice_ to microphysics
but still supervenient on it
Level 2: Living systems (first norm)
emergence of **survival**
teleology enters (in a naturalized sense)
behavior becomes evaluable: viable / non-viable
Level 3: Social / cognitive organisms
**flourishing**, **sociality**
learning, coordination, culture
Level 4: Sapient/discursive practice
**truth** (norm of inquiry)
**legitimacy** (norm of institutions)
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This is a strong claim:
> Normativity is not everywhere—it _enters_ the world with life.
That’s a clear break from:
Brandom (normativity = discursive)
pan-normative views (norms everywhere)
reductive naturalism (norms nowhere)
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2) Your emergence claim vs Carroll
Sean Carroll
Carroll’s view (roughly):
emergence = useful description
all causation is fundamentally microphysical
higher-level talk = “way of talking”
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Your disagreement
You’re saying:
> higher-level systems are not just descriptions—they are **real causal structures**
Your line:
> “the star moves the atoms, the atoms don’t move the star”
That’s a poetic way of asserting:
**top-down causation**
or at least **system-level causal autonomy**
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Where you still agree with Carroll
no new fundamental forces
supervenience holds
So your position is:
> **non-reductive physicalism with real emergence**
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3) Deacon’s importance for your view
Terrence Deacon
Deacon’s key idea:
life introduces **constraint-based organization**
absence (what _doesn’t_ happen) becomes causally relevant
teleology emerges from constraint dynamics
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Why he fits you so well
Deacon gives you:
a way to talk about **function without mysticism**
emergence of **goal-directedness** from physics
a bridge from:
non-living → living
causal → normative
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Your extension of Deacon
Deacon:
> life → teleology (survival)
You:
> life → **normativity (survival as first norm)**
That’s a small but decisive step.
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4) Ellis and top-down causation
George F. R. Ellis
Ellis argues:
higher-level structures constrain lower-level dynamics
causation is multi-level
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Why you like him (with reservations)
He supports:
real system-level causation
rejection of strict reductionism
But yes—he sometimes drifts toward:
overly expansive metaphysical claims
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5) Your key philosophical move
This is the most important line in your whole view:
> **Normativity begins with life (survival), not with language.**
That gives you a clean ontological story:
|Domain|Status|
|---|---|
|Physics|causal, non-normative|
|Life|first norm (survival)|
|Mind/sociality|expanded norms|
|Language|explicit norm articulation|
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6) Why this avoids the main traps
(A) Avoids reductionism
Norms are not:
eliminable
or “just talk”
They emerge at a real level.
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(B) Avoids Brandom-style discursive idealism
Norms are not:
They are:
> articulated by language
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(C) Avoids crude teleology
You don’t posit:
Only:
organism-relative norms (survival, flourishing)
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7) The pressure point: are norms just functions?
Here’s where your view will be challenged.
A critic might say:
> “survival” is just biological function, not a norm
So the key question becomes:
What makes survival _normative_ rather than just functional?
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Your likely answer (needs to be explicit)
Something like:
> A norm exists where a system’s organization makes outcomes evaluable as better or worse relative to its continued existence and activity.
That is:
not just causal
but **teleologically structured**
and **error-sensitive**
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8) The big transition: survival → truth
This is your most ambitious step:
> truth emerges with language
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Why this is plausible
Language enables:
explicit claims
disagreement
justification
error recognition at a higher level
So:
> truth = norm governing _discursive corroboration_
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But note the tension
You also want:
> sentient practice is already corroborational
So you’ll need to distinguish:
**proto-corroboration (pre-linguistic)**
**truth-directed corroboration (linguistic)**
Otherwise it looks like:
truth is already there before language
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9) Your strongest formulation (refined)
Here’s a tightened version of your overall view:
> Nature exhibits a hierarchy of emergent organizational levels, each introducing new forms of constraint and evaluation. Non-living systems exhibit causal organization without normativity. With the emergence of life, normativity enters the world in the form of survival: behavior becomes evaluable as viable or non-viable relative to the organism’s continued existence. More complex organisms introduce further norms such as flourishing and social coordination. With the emergence of language, normativity becomes explicit and reflexive, giving rise to the norms of truth and legitimacy that govern discursive and institutional practices.
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10) Bottom line
You’re developing a position that:
takes emergence seriously (against Sean Carroll)
grounds normativity in biology (with Terrence Deacon)
allows multi-level causation (with George F. R. Ellis)
but extends all of them into a **normative ontology**
The key claim is:
> norms are not linguistic inventions or mere descriptions—they are real features of organized systems that arise with life and develop into increasingly explicit forms.
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If you want to sharpen this further, the next critical step is:
👉 to clearly distinguish **function**, **teleology**, and **normativity**
—that’s where most objections will concentrate, especially from both philosophers and scientists.