What is the point of having norms if society is a free-for-all?

Question

Norms are the expectations that we have of each other and society. They exist because tradition exists. They are taught in the home, churches, social groups, etc. What is up with this mentality that "society is ever evolving" in the sense that we should be more "accepting" and "tolerant"? I mean, kids in school with shirts on reading "Gay? I'm cool with that" Or kids with swatzika's tattooed on their forearms. If this is "social evolution", we're screwed. It seems to me that those who tolerate and accept anything and everything value nothing. Agree? yes or no, and why. Only sensible people need reply.

Answer 1

Norms are sentences or sentence meanings with practical, i. e. action-oriented (rather than descriptive, explanatory, or expressive) import, the most common of which are commands, permissions, and prohibitions. Another popular account of norms describes them as reasons to act, believe or feel.

Some kinds of norms
Orders and permissions express norms. Such norm sentences do not describe how the world is, they rather prescribe how the world should be. Imperative sentences are the most obvious way to express norms, but declarative sentences also do it very often, as is the case with many laws. Generally, whether an expression is a norm does not depend on its form, on the type of sentence it is expressed with, but only on the meaning of the expression.

Those norms purporting to create obligations (or duties) and permissions are called deontic norms (see also deontic logic). The concept of deontic norm is already an extension of a previous concept of norm, which would only include imperatives, that is, norms purporting to create duties. The understanding that permissions are norms in the same way was an important step in ethics and philosophy of law.

In addition to deontic norms, many other varieties have been identified. For instance, some constitutions establish the national anthem. These norms do not directly create any duty or permission. They create a "national symbol". Other norms create nations themselves or political and administrative regions within a nation. The action orientation of such norms is less obvious than in the case of a command or permission, but is essential for understanding the relevance of issuing such norms: When a folk song becomes a "national anthem" the meaning of singing one and the same song changes; likewise, when a piece of land becomes an administrative region, this has legal consequences for many activities taking place on that territory; and without these consequences concerning action, the norms would be irrelevant. A more obviously action-oriented variety of such constitutive norms (as opposed to deontic or regulatory norms) establishes social institutions which give rise to new, previously inexistent types of actions or activities (a standard example is the institution of marriage without which "getting married" would not be a feasible action; another are the rules constituting a game: without the norms of soccer, there would not exist such an action as executing an indirect free kick).

Any convention can create a norm, although the relation between both is not settled.

There is a significant discussion about (legal) norms that give someone the power to create other norms. They are called power-conferring norms or norms of competence. Some authors argue that they are still deontic norms, while others argue for a close connection between them and institutional facts (see Raz 1975, Ruiter 1993).

Linguistic conventions, for example, the convention in English that "cat" means cat or the convention in Portuguese that "gato" means cat, are among the most important norms.

Games completely depend on norms. The fundamental norm of many games is the norm establishing who wins and loses. In other games, it is the norm establishing how to score points.


Major characteristics
One major characteristic of norms is that, unlike propositions, they are not descriptively true or false, since norms do not purport to describe anything, but to prescribe, create or change something. Some people say they are "prescriptively true" or false. Whereas the truth of a descriptive statement is purportedly based on its correspondence to reality, some philosophers, beginning with Aristotle, assert that the (prescriptive) truth of a prescriptive statement is based on its correspondence to right desire. Other philosophers maintain that norms are ultimately neither true or false, but only successful or unsuccessful (valid or invalid), as their propositional content obtains or not.

There is an important difference between norms and normative propositions, although they are often expressed by identical sentences. "You may go out." usually expresses a norm if it is uttered by the teacher to one of the students, but it usually expresses a normative proposition if it is uttered to one of the students by one of his or her classmates. Some ethical theories reject that there can be normative propositions, but these are accepted by cognitivism. One can also think of propositional norms; assertions and questions arguably express propositional norms (they set a proposition as asserted or questioned).

Another purported feature of norms, it is often argued, is that they never regard only natural properties or entities. Norms always bring something artificial, conventional, institutional or "unworldly". This might be related to Hume's assertion that it is not possible to derive ought from is and to G.E. Moore's claim that there is a naturalistic fallacy when one tries to analyse "good" and "bad" in terms of a natural concept. In aesthetics, it has also been argued that it is impossible to derive an aesthetical predicate from a non-aesthetical one. The acceptability of non-natural properties, however, is strongly debated in present day philosophy. Some authors deny their existence, some others try to reduce them to natural ones, on which the former supervene.

Other thinkers (Adler, 1986) assert that norms can be natural in a different sense than that of "corresponding to something proceeding from the object of the prescription as a strictly internal source of action". Rather, those who assert the existence of natural prescriptions say norms can suit a natural need on the part of the prescribed entity. More to the point, however, is the putting forward of the notion that just as descriptive statements being considered true are conditioned upon certain self-evident descriptive truths suiting the nature of reality (such as: it is impossible for the same thing to be and not be at the same time and in the same manner), a prescriptive truth can suit the nature of the will through the authority of it being based upon self-evident prescriptive truths (such as: one ought to desire what is really good for one and nothing else).

Recent works maintain that normativity has an important role in several different philosophical subjects, not only in ethics and philosophy of law (see Dancy, 2000).


Do norms exist?

The question whether norms actually exist might arguably have the same answer as the question whether propositions exist.


Norms without expression
It is discussed whether there can be norms (or valid norms) which are not (yet) expressed in any way. Suppose someone decides to go to bed always before 5 a.m., but she does not say it. She just decides in her thoughts. It seems that she has just set a norm for herself.

Or suppose that a French court rules that it is unlawful to build a high wall in one's property with the sole purpose of casting a shadow on my neighbor's property, since that causes a damage and it is unlawful, in principle, to cause damages to other people. This court seems to be enforcing a general principle, a norm, the norm that it is unlawful, in principle, to cause damages. The problem is that this norm is not written anywhere in French laws and it cannot easily be grounded on a practice or custom. Should it be accepted as a valid norm?

atp

Answer 2

Society needs (and creates) norms for the following reasons:

1. Protection and continuation of society. If murder was considered acceptable in a society, the odds of that society surviving are pretty slim.
2. Decision-making. Although it's nice to think that we could make every decision for ourselves, nobody's that good. Social norms limit the number of decisions that people have to make, thereby making it easier to focus on the other (hopefully more important) decisions.
3. Communication. Let's face it, it's pretty hard to figure out what someone else wants. Social norms facilitate communication and understanding by giving people a framework within which they can understand other people's goals and motivations.
4. Social Order. People are competitive, and want to be better than other people -- for mates, food, respect, etc. If everyone is striving for the same goals, it makes it easier to measure success and failure.

Dropping social norms is society's way of adapting. If a norm hurts, or doesn't help, society, then society won't have to deal with any new problems after the norm is lost. If a norm was good, then either it will see a resurgence, or it will be replaced with a new norm.

Personally, I think the change in norms that you're complaining about is healthy. I see no reason why you should not tolerate gays, lesbians, and the rest of the community. The social norm that said, "Gays are bad!" doesn't really serve any of the above functions, and it hurts the gay community. There's no reason not to drop it and admit they're okay. Now, the neo-nazis... they might imperil #1. Hopefully that norm sticks around.

It sounds like (in my opinion), your world view is based on a set of social norms that are being seriously re-thought by society today. Although it may seem to you like nothing's sacred, there's a lot more that's being built up or being left untouched. Society won't be as different as you think. And remember how many norms have gotten changed in the past few decades! Civil rights, women's rights... those were all huge shifts in what people thought was important. And we're still alive and well.

Answer 3

In some sense, if we tolerate "everything", then yes, we will value almost nothing.

Is that how human soceity is? Absolutely not, standards change, but there are still standards.

Look at it this way. If two men want to have sex with each other, who is harmed? If a white supremacist wants to kill minorities, who is harmed? See the vast, huge, insurmountable difference between the 2?

As for humans being "screwed"... so what? What will we accmplish on the planet if we scorn gays? What will we accomplish if we tolerate them? Probably pretty close to the same thing. But one group of people will not be persecuted for something beyond their control.

What if all humans were bombed back into the stone age? Are we "screwed"? Who cares? In about 1,000 years all humans wil be dead anyway. Or maybe 10,000. Dead is dead. At that point, all human endeavor will be meaningless. So leave everyone alone.

Answer 4

err, the thing of the past will lost their value..... that's why the history repeat it self, cuz the new generation don't know it..

and new generation will define new value that old generation can't understand..

no, the evolution of value is not exsist in generation to the next but within each individual ego.....

Answer 5

its life unexplanitory gotta be awesome!,understsndable ,but at same time responsible , but might offend ! called damed if you do damed if you don't!