Psychology of normativity

What we present here are the outlines of a research program. In sections 1 and 2, we give a rough picture of the “cognitive revolution”, the context in which our program situates. In section 3, we briefly review some well-established lines of inquiry germane to ours (behavioural law and economics; criminal responsibility and imputability; heuristics and biases in
adjudication). Section 4 is devoted to the core of our research program: what are the psychological processes involved in the understanding, issuing and complying with norms, and in rule-based decision-making? Subsequently, in the last two sections, we give a glimpse on what we have done already (not much), and on what we plan to do in the next future.

Celano’s notion of a “pre-convention” is grounded in the opposition between two allegedly different kinds of normative behaviour: observing a “rule” and conforming to a “norm”. This opposition plays a central role in Celano’s paper, and marks a crucial point in his intellectual trajectory. Nevertheless, it remains largely implicit. In this paper, I try to make it fully explicit,
giving a more precise characterisation of both kinds of normative behaviour. I also focus on the importance of distinguishing between them, express some conjectures (or wishes) regarding Celano’s future research, and propose a (marginal) criticism.

Normative guidance is a way of influencing others’ behaviour which operates through the mind (through mental states and processes such as norm understanding, normative reasoning, belief in norm’s validity, choice to follow it, etc.). Knowledge of the relevant aspects of the mind has therefore a clear importance in order to improve normative guidance (increase its efficacy, rationalize it, moralize it, etc.). But the study of the relationship between mind and normativity is a too wide field, impossible to explore in its entirety: selection criteria are needed. In this article I propose some contributions to their elaboration. First, I point out the “phenomenon of normativity” (meant as the conscious experience of norms) as the general scope of the theories of mind relevant for normative guidance, offering a rough sketch of it. Second, I show how, inside this general scope, the theories of mind preferable for the purposes of normative guidance are not necessarily the best one from a scientific point of view. Thirdly, I explore in this light the possible relevance of “Eliminativism”, i.e. the thesis, discussed in the philosophy of mind, that folk psychology concepts, such as propositional attitudes, misrepresent the mind, and that theories of mind built on the folk psychology framework are therefore bad scientific theories, to give up in favour of theories framed with totally different concepts, which could be provided by the neurosciences.