Social Norms Flashcards
What is normativism?
The idea that an adequate account or the social world must include appeal to norms, and that the social sciences should not be merely descriptive.
Normativism is anti-naturalistic and believes that the social science requires a substantial commitment to values, norms, and rules.
What is Marcel’s Maus’ perspective on normativism?
He accounts that social phenomena are impossible to describe without normative language.
For example, gift exchange is conceptualized in terms of mutual obligation and has consequences.
What is a thick concept? Give an example.
A thick concept expresses specific evaluative meaning that is also substantially descriptive:
e.g., courage, betrayal (can be described by certain behaviours and also evaluated as desirable, undesirable, virtuous.
Another example is Marcel Maus’s description of gift giving, and its associated obligations.
What is individualism?
The concept about social norms that states stable patterns of social interaction arise out of individual rational choices.
Individualism does not explain how we solve coordination problems, and these situations call for norms or conventions.
What is a convention?
An arbitrary patters of regularities.
MUST be both universal and arbitrary
e.g., driving on the right side of the road.
What is David Lewis’ definition of a convention and how does he differentiate it from a regularity?
A regularity in the behaviour of a population when they are agents in a situation is a convention is and only is any instance of the situation:
1. Everyone conforms to R
2. Everyone expects everyone to conform to R
3. Everyone prefers to conform to R on the condition that others do, since the situation is a coordination problem and uniformity to the regularity leads to a coordination equilibrium
What is Christina Biccieri’s perspective on social norms?
Norms are a kind of regularity. Not just regularity of behaviour but of a more complex regularity of belief and conditional preference. Norms exist when when a sufficient number of people within the population have the relevant empirical and normative expectations
Describe contingency and the conditional preference of social norms. Who described this?
Contingency: i knows that rule R exists and applies to situations of type S
Conditional preference: i prefers to conform to r in situations of type S on the condition that there are both normative and empirical.
–> Empirical: i believes that a sufficiently large subset of P conforms to R in situations of type S AND EITHER
–> Normative: i believes that a sufficiently large subset of P expects I to conform to R in situations of type OR
–> Normative with sanctions: i believes that a sufficiently large subset of P expects and prefers i to conform to R in situations of type S
How does Peter Winch believe an accurate account of rules or social norms should?
According to Winch, rules and social norms must be learnable and mistakes must be possible.
What is joint action? Who gave an example for it?
Something can cannot be done by a single person.
Robert Sugden’s example: family preferences while travelling that do not necessarily align with each individual preference.
Who described group preferences?
Sugden with the travelling example
Howdoes Margaret Gilbert’s feel about social groups’ intentions?
Gilbert is anti-reductionst, notes that social groups are plural subjects and that such groups can have beliefs, intentions, and agency.
What is a joint commitment?
A personal commitment involves something like obligation and can be rescinded. However, joint commitments cannot be individually rescinded, because they entail obligation to others.
What is the own action principle? How does it relate to joint action?
A person can only intend to do something over which they can control.
For true joint actions, no individual can have intentions alone because the intended action cannot be done alone.
How does Michael Bratman define Joint Intentions?
Meshing subplan.
We intend to do J if and only if:
1. (a) I intent that we J and (b) you intend that we J
2. I intend that we J in accordance with and because of 1a, 1b, and the meshing subplans of 1a/b. As do you
3. 1 and 2 are common knowledge between us.
