Normativity

This paper aims to develop a new understanding of normativity based upon the priority of the ordinary. By relying upon diverse sociological and philosophical traditions, the paper seeks to emphasize the ordinary tacit assumptions which provide the basic structure of our experience of the world and its normative features. The general argument is that, whereas sociological traditions of social interactionism shed new light upon the “empirical fact of normativity”, ordinary language philosophy and pragmatism offer a theoretical account of normativity which is consistent with the picture of normativity which emerges out of these empirical descriptions. The paper synthesizes the main achievements of these traditions into a unified account of normativity.

in "Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia del diritto", 2/2021.

ABSTRACT: Definisco “normativismo trascendentale” la concezione per la quale le norme giuridiche non sono oggetto di una conoscenza possibile, ma sono ciò attraverso cui è possibile una conoscenza giuridica. Questa concezione – che è certamente di ispirazione kantiana e, per questo tramite, recupera anche alcuni spunti dal pensiero di Kelsen e di quello di Amedeo Conte – implica che le norme svolgano la funzione trascendentale di rendere possibile l’esperienza di ciò su cui esse vertono.

Wittgenstein’s Investigations proposed an egalitarian view about language games, emphasizing their plurality (“language has no downtown”). Uses of words depend on the game one is playing, and may change when playing another. Furthermore, there is no privileged game dictating the rules for the others: games are as many as purposes. This view is pluralist and egalitarian, but it says little about the connection between meaning and use, and about how a set of rules is responsible for them in practice.
Brandom’s Making It Explicit attempted a straightforward answer to these questions, by developing Wittgensteinian insights: the primacy of social practice over meanings; the idea that meaning is use; the idea of rule–following to understand participation in social practices. Nonetheless, Brandom defended a non–Wittgensteinian conception of discursive practice: language has a “downtown”, the game of “giving and asking for reasons”. This is the idea of a normative structure of language, consisting of advancing claims and drawing inferences. By means of assertions, speakers undertake “commitments” that can be challenged/defended in terms of reasons (those successfully justified can gain “entitlement”). This game is not one among many: it is indispensable to the very idea of discursive practice.
In this paper, my aim will be that of exploring the main motivations and
implications of both perspectives.

Não obstante o apreciável labor produzido pelas historiografias portuguesa e brasileira no que concerne à História Eclesiástica e Religiosa na Época Moderna, os comportamentos luxuriosos da sociedade e, particularmente, os do clero nem sempre foram estudados de forma profunda através de fontes históricas e usando o método comparativo. Talvez por isso se tenha verificado, até hoje, a latência de modelos concetuais antigos, de natureza sociológica e antropológica, no campo historiográfico da História, que tendem a ver na colónia brasileira certos traços específicos sem os testar pela via contrastiva. Um deles, talvez o maior, é o luso-tropicalismo, à luz do qual foram forjadas as seguintes ideias: o clima das terras quentes, como as do Brasil, instigava à luxúria; essa imoralidade, que ocorria entre os vários grupos étnicos que povoavam a colónia, era tolerada e/ou instrumentalizada como política colonial de incremento populacional, sendo esse um traço distintivo da colonização portuguesa. Por pressupor, na colónia, a inexistência, inoperância ou complacência dos mecanis-mos judiciais eclesiásticos de vigilância e disciplinamento, este quadro argumentativo será revisto à luz de fontes judiciais originais e de um enfoque comparativo incidente sobre a luxúria clerical nas duas margens do Atlântico Português. Abstract: Despite the considerable labor of the Portuguese and Brazilian historiog-raphies concerning the ecclesiastic and religious history in the early modern period, the lustful behaviors of society, and particularly those of the clergy, have not always been studied in depth through historical sources and using the comparative method. Perhaps that is why a latency of old conceptual models, of a sociological and an-thropological nature, in the historiographical field of history have persisted upt the present, which tend to see certain specificities in the Brazilian colony without testing them in a contrastive way. One of them, perhaps the largest one, is Luso-tropicalism, in light of which the following ideas were forged: the climate of hot lands, like those of Brazil, instigated lust; this immorality, which occurred among the various ethnic groups that populated the colony, was tolerated and/or managed as a colonial policy of population increase, a distinctive feature of Portuguese colonization. Since these arguments assume that in the colony the ecclesiastical judicial mechanisms of vigilance and discipline did not exist, were inoperative or complacent, a review will be

This was a research paper for a course entitled Feminist and Multicultural Theologies. I unpack what gender complementarianism is, examine its history, and compare it to how Scripture and earlier Christian Tradition understood gender. This allows me to establish that gender complementarianism is a recent innovation in secular and Christian thinking about gender, and that it can be described as a "trajectory" from Scripture and Tradition on gender, influenced by social, ideological, and intellectual developments in secular societies. I then pursue a critique of gender complementarianism, arguing that it is an "unsatisfactory trajectory" because it has troubling implications for orthodox theology, is not borne out by empirical experience and observation, and has harmful effects on human beings and societies and on ethical development.

Biosemantics is an inclusive naturalistic philosophical account of the intentional content of both mental and linguistic representations. As it is well known, Millikan explains the normative dimension of intentional content in terms of natural function. However, Millikan’s account (and its reception) suffers from three fundamental problems (1) Usually, her account is not situated in the suitable philosophical tradition, in my view, this tradition is classical pragmatism (Peirce, Mead, Morris) and the pragmatist themes in Sellars’ philosophy, and not classical cognitive science (or Fodorian Psychosemantics). The first chapter of the book is, thus, an exercise in re-contextualization. (2) Biosemantics has neither a philosophically satisfactory notion of naturalism nor a very clear idea of normativity. I claim that biosemantics needs both, a non-reductionist notion of naturalism (I call it “Biological Naturalism”) and a unified account of normativity. Chapters 2 and 3 are dedicated to these tasks. (3) Millikan’s account of perception is underdeveloped. By taking up arguments and distinctions from Thomas Reid, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and J.J. Gibson chapter 5 establishes a theory of the non-conceptual content of (visual) perception in a biosemantic framework.
The manuscript is in need of revision on two different levels: Firstly, the architecture of the book is not clear enough, it contains too much material, and the exposition of Millikan’s point of view could be more straight forward. Secondly, two important arguments do not work in their present shape, namely the argument for self-consciousness in non-human animals (section 4.4) and the argument from animalism against the infamous swampman problem (sections 4.1-4.3). I have received many valuable comments, suggestions, and criticisms.
Obviously, my current SNF-Project at the University of Fribourg “Biosemantics and Normative Pragmatism (Millikan and Brandom)” is a continuation of the Habilitation into the realms of concepts, thought, and self-consciousness."

Non-naturalist realists are committed to the belief, famously voiced by Parfit, that if there are no non-natural facts then nothing matters. But it is morally objectionable to conditionalise all our moral commitments on the question of whether there are non-natural facts. Non-natural facts are causally inefficacious, and so make no difference to the world of our experience. And to be a realist about such facts is to hold that they are mind-independent. It is compatible with our experiences that there are no non-natural facts, or that they are very different from what we think. As Nagel says, realism makes scepticism intelligible. So the non-naturalist must hold that you might be wrong that your partner (for example) matters, even if you are correct about every natural, causal fact about your history and relationship. But to hold that conditional attitude to your partner would be a moral betrayal. So believing non-naturalist realism involves doing something immoral.

Our intuitions related to art are generally associated to ideas such as creativity, freedom of expression, experimentation. The fact that so many artists (especially writers, but also musicians, painters, performance artists) are or have been people with training in legal disciplines should be taken into account when considering the apparently extrinsic relationship between art and law. The question we have to answer is the following.
When we make a judgment of taste looking, say, at the Mona Lisa, what does
that mean exactly? What do we mean when we say that “the Mona Lisa is beautiful and an absolute masterpiece of Western art”? This statement contains a judgment of taste (Mona Lisa is beautiful) and an artistic judgment (it is a masterpiece of Western art). In what follows I will show that: i) the two judgments are different, ii) both judgments have normative nature, but the normativity of the judgment of taste refers to different elements from the artistic judgment and, finally, iii) contemporary visual arts require the formulation of an artistic judgment rather than a judgment of taste.

In phenomenology, normality is neither an objectively measurable average nor a mere historical or social construct. Rather than being understood from without, looked at from the outside of lived experiences, normality is approached from within as a condition and mode of lived experience. In the first part of the paper, I will show why it is relevant to turn to a phenomenological investigation of normality if one is interested in normativity. This perspective, so I will argue, is needed if one wants to understand not only how external norms actually become part of subjective experience but also how norms develop in the first place through repeated practices. As such, the experience of normality, understood here as consisting of selfevident feelings of orientation and familiarity, can be interpreted as the result of an operative normativity. In the second part, I will present Husserl's theory of normality in more detail in order to demonstrate how it could be applied to a more systematic investigation of normality and norms on different genetic levels. Lived normality is seen here as a dynamic and fragile system of balances; a constant attempt to achieve an equilibrium with one's environment and fellow subjects. (Re)turning to normality allows us to see normativity at work, embedded in the need for constant development, appropriation, and transformations of regular structures in experience.

Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Nature B.V.. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self-archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com". Jonathan Dancy is known for defending bold and often controversial positions. Practical Shape, in which Dancy defends what he calls a 'Neo-Aristotelian' theory of reasoning, is no exception in that regard.

Education permanente, Tome 196, n°3, p. 175-184.

Cet article interroge l’activité de soins aux personnes âgées dépendantes et le rôle joué par le collectif de travail dans le développement et les transformations de cette activité. Source d’obligations, le collectif y joue un rôle équivoque, limitant les initiatives en terme de soins, et réglant de manière stricte l’usage du temps, devenu un enjeu majeur de l’activité. Il s’agit donc de comprendre comment les soignants parviennent, dans un contexte où leurs marges de manœuvres sont réduites, à opérer des recréations de l’activité afin de réaliser des soins à la personne âgée. Nous montrons qu’en dehors des ressources pourvues par le collectif de travail peuvent être mobilisées d’autres ressources, issues de l’histoire personnelle, des relations interpersonnelles, notamment familiales, et de formations trans-individuelles.

This article questions the care activity of older dependent people and interrogates the part played by the work collective in the development of this activity. The work collective’s part is equivocal and produces some obligations who limit the care initiatives. It sorts the use of time who became a major activity issue. We try to understand how the care givers reach to recreate, in a constraining context, the activity in order to carry out some treatment to elderly person. We show that others resources exist, apart from the collective’s resources. These resources come from the personal history, interpersonal or family relationships and transindividual trainings.

Revue de Psychologie du Travail et des Organisations, Tome 20, n°1, p. 91-104.

Cet article étudie les relations entre le travail de soins et les contraintes temporelles. L’objectif est de comprendre les effets de ces contraintes sur l’activité des soignants. Une recherche-action a été menée durant 18 mois au sein d’un EHPAD (établissement d’hébergement pour personnes âgées dépendantes). Elle s’est intéressée à l’activité de 34 soignants. La méthode a associé observation et entretien. Notre cadre théorique est issu de la clinique du travail et de l’ergonomie. L’analyse de l’activité des soignants montre les effets des contraintes organisationnelles sur l’activité. L’activité des soignants se focalise sur la gestion du temps plutôt que sur les soins. Au final, la qualité du travail est altérée, et le travail perd de son sens en sacrifiant son principal objectif.

This article investigates the relationships between care activity and temporal constrains. The main objective is to understand the constrain effects on care givers activity. It is aimed at understanding the effects of the requirements on care givers activity. A research-action of eighteen month was conducted within a residential establishment for older dependent people and studied the activity of thirty four care givers. Our theoretical frame associates both work clinic and ergonomics. Investigations method combined both observation and interviews. The analysis of the care givers activity shows the effects of the organizational constrains on the activity. The care givers activity focuses on time organization rather than care. Finally, the quality of work is impaired, the work looses its sense and misses its primary objectives.

This article suggests a tentative model for the legal conceptualization of the great variety of instruments by which international institutions exercise public authority, brought to light by the thematic studies of this project. If one were to display this variety of instruments on a scale that ranges from binding international law to non-legal instruments, hardly any thinkable step on this scale would remain empty. Situated at the top end of the scale one would find binding instruments such as international treaties, periodic treaty amendments, decisions on individual cases with binding effect or decisions having the potential to become binding by way of domestic recognition. While these instruments clearly have external legal effects, other instruments seem to be purely internal rules of procedure, although they have in fact considerable repercussions for national administrations. Next come various types of soft, i.e. non-binding legal instruments. Some of these instruments operate in the shadow of binding instruments. Others are kept in purely soft form, like product standards or codes of conduct, but also decisions concerning individuals. In the lower part of the scale one would find instruments containing non-binding rules that are foremost aimed at facilitating consultation, or soft private law instruments. At the bottom end one would discover non-legal instruments that are devoid of any deontic elements, but nevertheless have a high legal or political impact on the affected policy area. Examples of this class of instruments include factual assessment reports, indicators, reports on implementation and compliance, and databases.

If language and thought are to be taken as objective, they must respond to how the world is. I propose to explain this responsiveness in terms of conditions of correction, more precisely, by taking thoughts and linguistic utterances to be assessible as true or false. Furthermore, the paper is committed to a form of qui- etism according to which the very same thing that can be (truly) thought or expressed is the case: 'soft facts' as opposed to hard, free-standing facts, independent of any possible rational activity of grasping them.

Feministisch-kritischer Wissenschaft geht es um eine engagierte wissenschaftliche Praxis, die sich von der Kritik an Ungleichheitsverhältnissen, Ausschlüssen und Diskriminierungen qua Geschlecht absetzt und an Vorstellungen von Solidarität und Gerechtigkeit orientiert. Damit ist unhintergehbar eine normative Dimension verbunden. Zugleich hat feministisch-kritische Wissenschaft eine normativitätsskeptische Perspektive entwickelt, mit der sie auf die machtvollen Wirkungen von Normen und Normalitätsvorstellungen aufmerksam macht und unhinterfragte Denkvoraussetzungen und Handlungsorientierungen radikal dekonstruiert. Die interdisziplinären Beiträge des Bandes diskutieren die Frage der Normativität und die damit verbundenen Ambivalenzen nicht nur im Kontext der Geschlechterverhältnisse.

—ABSTRACT— Since the publication of Truth, Paul Horwich's 'Minimalism' has become the paradigm of what goes under the label 'the deflationary conception of truth'. Despite the many theoretical virtues of Horwich's minimalism, it is usually contended that it cannot fully account for the normative role that truth plays in enquiry. As I see it, this concern amounts to several challenges. One such challenge—call it the axiological challenge—is about whether deflationists have the theoretical resources to explain the value of truth. Some philosophers (e.g. Michael Lynch and Bernard Williams) have argued that they do not. The thought is that by being valuable in the way it is, truth plays a non-trivial explanatory role with respect to core phenomena of enquiry. In order to account for this aspect of truth, the challenge goes, we need to inflate truth's nature to an extent incompatible with core tenets of the minimalist conception. In this paper, I first provide some clarifications of what we mean exactly when we say that truth is valuable. By borrowing important distinction from the current debate in axiology, I elaborate a framework within which to conduct investigations into the value of truth. With reference to Horwich's discussion of the issue, I then discuss the link between questions concerning the explanatory role of truth and the issue of its metaphysical inflation. I conclude by briefly exploring a few strategies on behalf of minimalists to address the axiological challenge. 2

In this article I comment on the fact that the Internet and social media are often depicted as orthographically unregulated spaces in public and political discourses on young peoples’ use of social media. I point out that adolescent Facebook users in fact do orient towards different norms of language use by means of self- and other-corrections. I argue that corrections of language use are about more than mere orientation toward linguistic correctness and I suggest that correction practices on Facebook provide information about social relations among the adolescents I study. By carrying out sequential analysis of Facebook interactions I demonstrate how the adolescents negotiate each other’s (linguistic) behavior and what norms are relevant in different situations.

Toilets in modern water closets rise up from the floor like water lilies. The architect does all he can to make the body forget how paltry it is, and to make man ignore what happens to his intestinal wastes after the water from the tank flushes them down the drain. Even though the sewer pipelines reach far into our houses with their tentacles, they are carefully hidden from view, and we are happily ignorant of the invisible Venice of shit underlying our bathrooms, bedrooms, dance halls, and parliaments. Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being All is designed A cursory look at our surroundings should suffice to show that our lives are carried out in the depth of a designed environment. So prevalent is the presence of design in our experience that the fact that our environment is designed has become transparent and in this transparency, invisible. Sheltered in the inconspicuousness and normalcy of daily use, the normative might of the rules that issue from the objects of our use determining our customary doings becomes lost from view. Virtually all our doings—both voluntary and, more remarkably, involuntary actions—are framed, determined, oriented and guided by our interactions with objects of human invention and manufacture. Nature, our own and around us, has been counterfeited. This, however, is not necessarily a bad thing. The park, the animal, the field, the sky and the mountain, all those things that we insist in calling 'nature' are little more than impostors. By design, nature has receded out of sight and the often-heard political summon of its proverbial purity expressing naturalist appeals to biological authenticity are politically suspect. We are not in nature and the traces of nature that remain with us are the product of our invention. By design,

Fabra (1956) conté una proposta per a la grafia de les paraules compostes que és estructural (les regles estan vinculades, §4) i humanista (posa les regles dins del saber dels parlants, de manera que les poden dominar, §6). En canvi, la proposta de la Secció Filològica de l’Institut d’Estudis Catalans (2017) és plana (sense relacions) i no considera els parlants (els quals no poden dominar les seues regles, §8-§10). A més, la Filològica s’aparta de Fabra sense constatar-ho (i, per tant, sense justificar-ho), i és oscil•lant (arrítmic passa a arítmic en 1995, i torna a arrítmic en el 2017). Este llibre reflexiona sobre com canviar normes (§1), justifica l’estructura gramatical de Fabra (§2), completa la teoria sobre la derivació, la composició i els prefixos compositius (§3), justifica les regles de Fabra (§4), i procura sistematitzar l’ús del guionet (§5 i §11). També mostra que l’actitud que l’Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua ha tingut davant de la Filològica és generosa, però poc reflexiva (§13). El llibre es completa amb una proposta divulgativa (§14) i un resum de cada capítol (§15).

To explain an intentional action one must exhibit the agent's reasons. Donald Davidson famously argued that the only clear way to understand action explanation is to hold that reasons are causes. Davidson's discussion conflated two issues: whether reasons are causes and whether reasons causally explain intentional action. Contemporary work on explanation and normativity help disentangle these issues and ground an argument that intentional action explanations cannot be a species of causal explanation. Interestingly, this conclusion is consistent with Davidson's conclusion that reasons are causes. In other words, reasons are causes, but rationalizing explanations are not causal explanations.

De bundel 'Goed werk' heeft me geraakt, zet me aan het denken en biedt me houvast. Het boek raakt me, omdat veel bijdragen duidelijk maken hoe de professional van vandaag in de knel zit tussen consumentisme, professionalisme en managerialisme. De auteurs zetten mij als professional aan het denken omdat ze verschillende, elkaar soms overlappende en soms aanvullende frames bieden om te refl ecteren op de eigen professionele praktijk, de eigen opvattingen te kaderen, en ervaringen in perspectief en in samenhang te zien. Ze bieden me houvast met aanpakken om de eigen praktijk verder te ontwikkelen.

Samuel Scheffler has argued that people value tradition for its own sake because they view it as accumulated experience, and as playing an important role in forming their personal integrity, structuring their lives, and providing them with a sense of belonging. These reasons, according to Scheffler, are de facto justifications that people offer for choosing to act on purely traditional grounds. In this essay, I argue that these de facto reasons must be supplemented if they are to be seen as de jure rational grounds for valuing tradition for its own sake. Such a supplementation would open up the possibility of articulating a coherent theory of moderate cosmopolitanism.

The objective of this paper is to describe cross-country similarities and differences in national pride and to explain national pride variations on the individual and country levels. The analysis in this paper is applied to different measures of national pride, with some of them being relatively complex cognitively and the others more elementary. The paper presents the results of cross-country comparison of national pride based on empirical evidence from the ISSP-2003 database which included data from 45993 respondents from 36 countries and regions. The survey participants estimated their overall level of national pride by responding to the direct one-item question and, separately, they estimated pride of each of ten specific achievements of their countries in various domains. Factor analysis of these ten items yielded two dimensions of domain-based national pride, one of them being the factor of general pride of various country achievements and the other reflects the inverse relations between the prides of elitist and mass achievements of the nation.

The multilevel regression models estimated for the three indicators of national pride confirm the feasibility of dividing these indicators into cognitively processed and normatively imposed national pride. Cognitively processed national pride measured by the domain-based estimates have been affected by objective country achievements and by the level of standards which the achievements are compared against. The normatively imposed national pride measured by direct one-item question has been influenced by the country level of religiosity that indicates the individual willingness to accept normative messages from the state uncritically.

Rational national pride requires some objective grounds to believe in a nation’s perfection, and normative national pride is not so strongly related to objective achievements and therefore can be more easily manipulated. The practical implication of this difference stems from the fact that in their search for objectively grounded national pride people would be eager to foster country achievements and their maintenance of normatively imposed pride requires in many cases just reliably protected wishful thinking.

Morality and rationality are both normative: the moral claim "you ought to help others" is a genuine normative judgment, as well as the prudential maxim "you ought to brush your teeth twice a day". But it seems that there is a crucial difference these two judgments. In the first part of this paper, I argue that this difference is to be understood as a difference between two kinds of normativity: demanding and recommending normativity. But the crucial task is, of course, to explain the difference. In the second part of this paper, I suggest that metaethical expressivists can provide a good explanation: by extending the analysis of ordinary (nonnormative) demands and recommendations to normative judgments, they can formulate a convincing account that captures the key differences between morality and rationality.

________________________________________________________________________ Publicado en el Diario Oficial N º 236, Tomo Nº 369 del 19/12/05 con vigencia desde el 1º/06/06 REGLAMENTO TÉCNICO CENTROAMERICANO RTCA 23.01.29:05 INFORME Los respectivos Comités Técnicos de Normalización a través de los Entes de Normalización de los Estados Parte del Protocolo al Tratado General de Integración Económica Centroamericana -Protocolo de Guatemala-, son los organismos encargados de realizar el estudio o la adopción de las Normas Técnicas o Reglamentos Técnicos. Están conformados por representantes de los sectores Académico, Consumidor, Empresa Privada y Gobierno. Este documento fue aprobado como Reglamento Técnico Centroamericano, RTCA 23.01.29:05. RECIPIENTES A P RESIÓN. CILINDROS PORTÁTILES PARA CONTE NER GLP. ESPECIFICACIONES DE FABRICACIÓN, por el Subgrupo de Medidas de Normalización. La oficialización de este reglamento técnico, conlleva la aprobación por el Consejo de Ministros de Integración Económica (COMIECO). MIEMBROS PARTICIPANTES DEL SUBGRUPO 01 Por Guatemala COGUANOR Por El Salvador CONACYT Por Nicaragua MIFIC Por Honduras SIC Por Costa Rica MEIC REGLAMENTO TÉCNICO CENTROAMERICANO RTCA 23.01.29:05 1

Hegel's "Philosophy of Spirit" applies two different notions of 'social practice'-one as a condition of possibility for intentional action and another one as the living actuality within which an action is initiated and takes place. Both notions go hand in hand with their own logically distinct form of normativity-social normativity and the normativity of right. Whereas the first one can already be understood from the standpoint of subjective spirit, the second notion is at home in objective spirit or Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie. Stressing this distinction has consequences not only for a more differentiated account on Hegel's philosophy of action, but also for an interpretation of ethical life-which should not be equated with the first notion of social practice. In order to mark the importance of ethical life for Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie, the relevance of objectivity for objective spirit needs to be highlighted, which according to Hegel cannot be derived from a process of inner transformation of changing attitudes of the acting subject towards the norms of her action. Hegel-Studien 53/54 (2020), S. 117-134

This paper explores certain issues that arise at the borderline between conceptual analysis and metaphysics, where answers to questions of a conceptual nature compete with answers to questions of an ontological or metaphysical nature. I focus on the way in which three philosophers, Kant, Collingwood and Davidson, articulate the relationship between the conceptual question “what are actions?” and the metaphysical question: “how is agency possible?” I argue that the way in which one handles the relationship between the conceptual and the ontological question has important implications for one’s conception of the nature of philosophy and that thinking hard about what it takes to defend the autonomy of the mental and of the agent-centred perspective should force us to think about our underlying conception of philosophy and to choose between one that understands it as first science and one that understands it as the under-labourer of science. Keywords: Davidson, Collingwood, reasons and causes, autonomy of the mental.

In this discussion, I shall present a general account of dilemmas - including, as I shall explain, both practical and epistemic dilemmas. According to this account, dilemmas are analysed in terms of conflicting values. Roughly, a dilemma is a case where every available response is in some way worse than some other available response; as I shall explain, this implies that there must be plurality of conflicting values, which disagree about how to rank these responses in relation to each other. After proposing and defending this conception of dilemmas, I shall characterize three kinds of dilemmas: as I shall call them, resoluble dilemmas, unreal dilemmas, and irresoluble dilemmas. The first and second kind of dilemmas are in a way untroubling, but there is no denying the troubling character of the third kind of dilemma. Unfortunately, it seems undeniable that irresoluble dilemmas of this third kind are possible; how widespread they are is a question that requires further investigation.

Though legal positivism remains popular, HLA Hart's version has fallen somewhat by the wayside. This is because, according to many, the central task of a theory of law is to explain the so-called " normativity of law. " Hart's theory, it is thought, is not up to the task. Some have suggested modifying the theory accordingly. This paper argues that both Hart's theory and the normativity of law have been misunderstood. First, a popular modification of Hart's theory is considered and rejected. It stems from a misunderstanding of Hart and his project. Second, a new understanding of the mysterious but often-mentioned "normativity of law" is presented. Once we have dispelled some misunderstandings of Hart's view and clarified the sense in which law is supposed to be normative, we see that Hart's view, unmodified, is well suited to the task of explaining law's normativity.

The nature of  legal norm and legal provision are considered in the article, as well as the character of the relationships and interactions of the notions is determined.
Attention is drawn to the fact, that there is not only a lack of coordination of positions in modern legal literature, but diametrically opposing views on the nature, structure, classification functionality of legal norms exists.
In today's general theory of law was formed two approaches to the interpretation of the nature and structure of legal norm – «three-elements» and «two-elements». Representatives of the «three-elements» approach rightly point out that legal norm is the rule of conduct, that is not only established, but also ensured by a state (other subjects of law-making activity), and therefore it always consists of three elements – a hypothesis (if), a disposition (then) and a sanction (otherwise). The positions of the «three-elements» approach are rightly criticized, because of the impossibility of textual confirmation of these three elements in legal provisions.
The representatives of the «two-elements» approach, noting that legal regulation is not limited only to the rules of conduct, but also provides for other rules – rules-principles, rules-declarations, rules-definitions, conflict rules etc., argue that the rules have two-еlement internal structure, which textually confirmed in legislation.
In general theory of law the category of «legal provision» was introducted for the removal of contradictory positions. However, the introduction of the new term «legal provision» led to the arising of even more contradictory and opposing positions. Thus, currently we have the following main approaches to the relationship and interaction between the notions of «legal norm» and «legal provision2: 1) they are identical concepts - any legal norm is legal provision and any legal provision is legal norm; 2) they are not identical, but homogeneous notions — since legal norm is a kind of legal provision; 3) they are not identical and not homogeneous notions - legal norm is an ideal and logical structure of general theory of law and belongs to the system of law; legal provision is a real and textual formulation and belongs to the system of legislation (legal sources).
To remove these contradictory positions and establish an integrated and coherent concept of legal norm and legal provision one argues the position in the article, that legal norms and legal provisions interact as a content and a form. The content is legal norm, elements of which are fixed in two legal provisions. They also work together as a whole and a part. Legal norm is a whole, legal provision is a part.
Legal norm is an ideal logical construction, that reflects such regularity of law as establishing and ensuring by a state (other subjects of law-making activity). This regularity is appeared in the required structure of legal norm, which must always consist of three elements – a hypothesis, a disposition and a sanction.
Legal norm, as an ideal logical model of the rule of conduct, is textually fixed in legal provisions. The peculiarity of legal provision is that it is formulated in the form of a sentence. The grammatical form of a sentence allows to fix textually only two and not all the three elements of legal norm. Therefore, the establishing of legal norm always demands two legal provisions. One of them is regulatory provision, forming the rule of conduct (disposition) and the conditions of its operation (hypothesis). Second – protective, which formulates the condition of breaking a rule (hypothesis) and reaction in violations (sanctions).
One proposes in the article to name both the regulatory and protective legal provisions,  forming the complete content of legal norm, «norm-establishing provisions». Other legal provisions, including rules-principles, rules-declarations, rules-definitions, conflict rules, operative rules, one proposes to name «norm-serviсing provisions», since they are purposed to ensure conditions for the proper functioning and operating of law.
To confirm these theoretical positions one proposes the tables in the end of the article, where the examples of legal norms and legal previsions demonstrate the nature of their relationship and interaction.

Keywords: legal norm, legal provision, hypothesis, disposition, sanction.

This chapter makes a close reading of a short vignette in Eyrbyggja saga - the attempted forced marriage between the Swedish berserk Halli and Víga-Styrr's daughter Ásdis - exploring the ways that various norms and normative expectations are deliberately manipulated by the characters in question to further their own social goals in the narrative.

This paper presents a particular interpretation of Urmson's account of supererogatory actions, defends that interpretation and discusses the lacunae in the account so interpreted, and then introduces and defends a novel theoretical foundation for the account, yielding a complete theory of the principal class of supererogatory acts.