Against normativism about mental attitudes

Abstract

Normativists argue that the mind is essentially normative and any adequate account of our mental attitudes must involve normative terms and judgments. In particular, one brand of Normativism defends the claim that mental attitudes are defined by constitutive norms. Against this, Anti-normativists have offered non-normative accounts of mental states.The goal of this paper is to bolster Anti-normativism by undermining one key argument in favor of Normativism.