The Normative and the Natural

This bookoffers an account of the different varieties of normativity that exist in theworld, and argues that there is in fact no conflict between the world of‘oughts’ and the scientific world view. The authors highlight the apparentdifference between the world of oughts – you ought not to lie, you ought to buylow and sell high – and the world of facts – described in terms of forces andparticles, chemicals and biological processes. This book argues that normative claims aim toevaluate, to urge us to do or not do something, and to tell us how a state ofaffairs ought to be. On this account, there are no normative facts, and so nothing thatneeds any troublesome shoehorning into a scientific account of the world. Nevertheless, normative claims areconstrained by the world, and answerable to reason and argumentation, in a waythat makes them truth-apt and objective. Drawing on the pragmatist tradition ofWittgenstein and Sellars, this book defends an alternative conception of thenormative, offering an account of the different kinds of ‘oughts’ we aresubject to. 

Michael P. Wolf is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy,Washington and Jefferson College, US.

Jeremy Koons is Associate Professor of Philosophy at theGeorgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar.