Scope or focus? Normative focus and the metaphysics of normative relations

Shackel, Nicholas ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1751-1400 2018. Scope or focus? Normative focus and the metaphysics of normative relations. Journal of Philosophy 115 (6) , pp. 281-312. 10.5840/jphil2018115619

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Abstract

A prolonged debate about the nature of norms has been conducted in terms of the scope of a modal operator. Here I argue that the features of what I call Normative Focus are more fundamental than scope. We shall see limitations of scope contrasted with better analysis in terms of Normative Focus. Some authors address such limitations by extending what they mean by scope. I show that scope is still not doing the work: what does it is their elicitation of our tacit knowledge of Normative Focus. Finally, I show that scope cannot capture Normative Focus because scope allows us to make only one distinction where we need to make three. So we should leave scope to the philosophers of language and turn instead to the ontology of Normative Focus.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	Journal of Philosophy
ISSN:	0022-362X
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	22 December 2017
Date of Acceptance:	19 December 2017
Last Modified:	29 Nov 2024 05:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/107766

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