Abstract
Norms are tools for manipulating human conduct through the manipulation of our goals and choices. It is impossible to understand the efficacy and working of norms without a modeling of how Ns work in our mind and how do they cut or give us goals. They are built for that. Thus, a sophisticated ontology of goals is necessary (endogenous vs. exogenous, desires, intentions, motives, pseudogoals, etc.). Ns also have goals (they are aimed at achieving certain social outcomes) and have “functions”: a different kind of goal. We do not understand and intend all the functions of Ns. The subject is not supposed or requested to understand even all the goals of Ns and to obey on condition that she agrees and cooperates. Ns also imply a meta-goal about our mind, about the reasons, motives that should induce us to obey; motives that ideally are not sanctions avoidance or convenience.
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Notes
- 1.
Consider, for example, Marx’s claim that prisons also reproduce themselves by reproducing delinquency; which of course is not the mission or the aim of prisons! But in a sense is a “bad function” of them.
- 2.
When driving a car, you “have to” use a safety belt even if you disagree about this prescription and use: It is not the case that you have to use one on condition that you agree that it is better for you or for the costs placed on the community.
- 3.
It is useless to create “norms/laws” for animals; better to use orders and threats, or physical barriers. In humans, mental barriers can work, and frequently even physical barriers primarily have a signaling, communication, function.
- 4.
As for issue (i), without the aforementioned conceptual unification, we cannot have a unitary theory of communication—or a theory of cooperation, of sociality, etc.—in animal and humans. What are today presented as unified theories are just a trick. In fact, these notions—which necessarily require a goal (e.g., “communication” requires not only a sign-“reader” but also a “sender”: The information is deliberately “given” to the “receiver/addressee”)—are defined in terms of adaptive functions when applied to simple animals (like insects), whereas in humans they are defined in intentional terms. Thus, there is no unified notion (or theory) of “communication,” in that we do not know the common kernel between a “functional” device and an “intentional” device. A remarkable attempt to deal with these problems is Ruth Millikan’s work.
- 5.
For example, only very recently have we discovered why we have to eat, the real functions/effects of our food in our organisms (proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, etc.), and very few people eat in view of such effects. We eat for hunger or pleasure or out of habit. Analogously, we do not usually engage in courtship and sex in view of reproduction: We are driven by other internal motives. We can even cut off the “adaptive” connection between our motives and their original functions, as by deciding to have sex without inseminating or without establishing/maintaining any friendly/affective relation or support.
- 6.
However, see the later discussion on the internalization of “authority” and on internal moral imperatives.
- 7.
Notice how this terminology (e.g., “approach”) is related to a semantics/connotation of “goal” that was criticized in Sect. 3, point A, as being too strongly inspired and constrained by behaviorism. Moreover, many motivational theories about avoidance and approach (such as Higgins’s) remain essentially hedonistic.
- 8.
Another important difference is between gradable and all-or-nothing goals, or between achievement and maintenance goals. But these distinctions here are less relevant (Castelfranchi 2012).
- 9.
This means that we cannot say, for example, “I feel the intention of…”—for the simple reason that sensory-motor format of the represented anticipatory state is not specified in the notion of intention. Intention is a more “abstract” notion of goal, with an unspecified codification. Looking at a goal as an “intention,” we abstract away from its possible sensory components.
- 10.
The creation of two distinct “primitives,” basic independent notions/objects (desires vs. intentions), is in part due to the wrong choice of adopting “desires” (also in accordance with common sense) as the basic motivational category and source. We have already criticized this reductive move (Sect. 4) and introduced a more general and basic (and not fully common sense) teleonomic notion. This notion also favors a better unification of kinds of goals and a better theory of their structural and dynamic relationships.
- 11.
An intention is always an intention to “do something” (including inactions). We cannot really have intentions about the actions of other autonomous agents. When we say something like “I have the intention that John go to Naples,” what we actually mean is “I have the intention to bring it about that John goes to Naples.”
- 12.
Decision-making serves precisely the function of selecting those goals that are feasible and coherent with one another, and allocating resources and planning one’s actual behavior.
- 13.
I would also say that an “intention” is “conscious”: We are aware of our intentions, and we “deliberate” about them; however, the problem of unconscious goal-driven behavior is open and quite complex (see Bargh et al. 2001).
- 14.
Or, better yet, the content goal derived from the N is in conflict with other goals I have.
- 15.
Notice that conflict is additional proof that an N is a goal and a goal source. In fact, conflict is a specific property of goals (of any kind: desires, drives, impulses, needs, projects, plans, intentions, values, etc.).
- 16.
These are not just frequent and regular behaviors but have a prescriptive component: People not only expect but want us to behave conformingly, and they critically react to any “violation” we may commit (Castelfranchi and Tummolini 2003).
- 17.
N’s other generic “function”—the restatement of a normative system, of authority, of submission—is also ensured by an internalized subgoal: the goal of adopting N (given its recognition as an N, which is another goal and subfunction of N).
- 18.
Meaning that the subject alienates his own intellectual evaluative, problem-solving, decision-making capabilities by “delegating” them to others, along with the power and the solution. Moreover, he is not in a condition to realize that, to understand this process, and behaves without recognizing his own alienated powers and without the possibility of reappropriating them. He has to be blind and to adopt N blindfolded.
- 19.
These are the famous findings of Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini (2000).
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Castelfranchi, C. (2018). The Goals of Norms. In: Bongiovanni, G., Postema, G., Rotolo, A., Sartor, G., Valentini, C., Walton, D. (eds) Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9452-0_7
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