2024 NYIP Lecture Series
Prof. Hannah Ginsborg (UC Berkeley)
"Normativity Without Reasons"
Lecture Three: "Normativity without reasons in Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations"
Handout available at the following link: drive.google.com/file/d/1Rjqp...
Abstract:
The notion of primitive normativity that I introduced in Lecture Two may seem philosophically problematic. How can I legitimately claim that I am doing as I ought in a given situation if I cannot cite a rule with which I am conforming, or give a reason in support of what I am doing? In this final lecture I defend the idea of primitive normativity, and of normativity without reasons more generally, by appealing to considerations raised by the later Wittgenstein in his discussion of rule-following. It may seem on the face of it that Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations are aimed precisely at undermining the kind of normativity on which I focus in Lecture Two. But I argue that this appearance is misleading. As I understand the rule-following considerations, they offer us the resources to make sense of normative claims-in particular, claims to be "going on" as we ought from examples we have been given-that are not grounded on reasons but are instead a condition of our capacity to entertain reasons and thus to make normative claims of a more sophisticated kind.