On Social, Moral, and Linguistic Norms

This chapter summarises the contributions to the volume The Normative Animal? On the Anthropological Significance of Social, Moral and Linguistic Norms. The contributions are divided into three sections in line with the tripartite division of the types of norms discussed in the volume. The key claims of the individual chapters are presented and set into relation to one another, and a number of issues raised by competition between the claims are highlighted. This prepares the ground for an assessment of the normative animal thesis in the light of the varying accounts both of specific deontic phenomena and of normativity in general. Central issues concern the concepts of social norms and conventions, the relative importance of coordination and cooperation, the nature and role of collective intentionality, the place of norms in evolutionary explanations, and the structure of normative action guidance. Decisive for the normative animal thesis are the questions as to whether moral principles and linguistic rules are correctly characterised as both real and deontic in the same senses in which these characterisations apply to social norms.