Social Facts & the Semantic Conception of Norms. Customary Norms as a Test of Ontology

Abstract

The essay addresses the debates about the ontology of norms considering the case of accounting for customary norms. It undertakes and defends a stance in favor of a semantic ontology by developing a framework for the explanation of norms as abstract objects and their linking with social facts to be identified in categories like “customary”, “enacted”, “legal”, “grammatical”, and so on. Furthermore, the work addresses the rival conceptions (pragmatic and eclectic) by showing the specific impossibility that these face for giving a satisfactory account on customary norms. The inquiry concludes by exploring some possible insights from the philosophy of mind to explain the conceptual nature of norms as mental representations.