Aristotle would answer “‘should’ is said in many ways”. I was of course thinking of the normative ‘should’, which I believe is the first that comes to mind when someone asks about normative sentences. But I’d be highly interested in a different kind of counterexample: a normative sentence without a ‘should’ stated or implied.
That’s true, but that comment was only meant for you, who seemed confused about what kind of ‘should’ you should use in a normative sentence. I took for granted that you already knew ‘normative’, because you had posted a nice and useful answer to the original question.
Why is it not considered normative? It follows rules of arithmetic. The operation should be carried out according to “correct” procedure and failure to do so results in something “wrong”. So why no count as normative?
You could make a case that it is a normative statement—certainly not everyone would consider it not to be. It would have been clearer if I’d phrased my response as a question: ‘would you consider that statement to be normative?’
My sense is that you have a pretty good idea of how philosophers use the word ‘normative’, and you’re pursuing a level of clarity about it that’s impossible to obtain. Since it (by definition) doesn’t map to anything in the physical or mathematical worlds, and arguably even if it did, it just isn’t possible to identify a class of phenomena with which you could concretely associate the word. It’s a convenience notion moral realists use to gesture at what they hope are sufficiently shared concepts. If you’re sceptical that it succeeds, maybe you just aren’t a moral realist...
Oh, I like this. Seems good to have a word for it, because it’s a set of constraints that a lot of us try to fit our morality into. We don’t want it to have logical contradictions. Seems icky. Though it does make me wonder what exactly I mean by ‘logical contradiction’.
There’s a ‘should’ either stated or implied.
‘If you add 1 to 1 you should get 2’ is not a statement people would necessarily consider normative.
Aristotle would answer “‘should’ is said in many ways”. I was of course thinking of the normative ‘should’, which I believe is the first that comes to mind when someone asks about normative sentences. But I’d be highly interested in a different kind of counterexample: a normative sentence without a ‘should’ stated or implied.
Defining a normative statement as ‘a statement with a normative “should”’ has certain problems...
That’s true, but that comment was only meant for you, who seemed confused about what kind of ‘should’ you should use in a normative sentence. I took for granted that you already knew ‘normative’, because you had posted a nice and useful answer to the original question.
Why is it not considered normative? It follows rules of arithmetic. The operation should be carried out according to “correct” procedure and failure to do so results in something “wrong”. So why no count as normative?
You could make a case that it is a normative statement—certainly not everyone would consider it not to be. It would have been clearer if I’d phrased my response as a question: ‘would you consider that statement to be normative?’
My sense is that you have a pretty good idea of how philosophers use the word ‘normative’, and you’re pursuing a level of clarity about it that’s impossible to obtain. Since it (by definition) doesn’t map to anything in the physical or mathematical worlds, and arguably even if it did, it just isn’t possible to identify a class of phenomena with which you could concretely associate the word. It’s a convenience notion moral realists use to gesture at what they hope are sufficiently shared concepts. If you’re sceptical that it succeeds, maybe you just aren’t a moral realist...
Yup
Self-pimp: http://www.valence-utilitarianism.com/posts/moral-exclusivism
Oh, I like this. Seems good to have a word for it, because it’s a set of constraints that a lot of us try to fit our morality into. We don’t want it to have logical contradictions. Seems icky. Though it does make me wonder what exactly I mean by ‘logical contradiction’.
Do “must” and “may” imply a should?