Authority, Moral Criteria of Validity, and Conceptual Confusion

Abstract

This chapter challenges the Identification Thesis. The Identification Thesis considers our conceptual practices with respect to the term ‘authority’ and states that they entail that an institutional normative system cannot be legitimate unless it is conceptually possible for a subject to determine what its norms require without having to decide themselves what they ought to do. If our conceptual practices with respect to using the terms ‘law’ and ‘authority’ are determined by what competent speakers typically believe and say about law and authority, then those ordinary linguistic practices allow for the possibility of a legitimate legal system with moral criteria of validity. Our conceptual practices are thus inconsistent with the Identification Thesis. As the Identification Thesis expresses the core of the service conception of authority, the service conception is inconsistent with the concept of authority as it is defined by our conceptual practices.