Social Norms and Obligation: Rescuing the Joint Commitment Account

Stahl, Titus
Journal article
in Analyse & Kritik, May 2024

 

Abstract

In Morality and Socially Constructed Norms, Laura Valentini argues that moral obligations to respect social norms can be explained without invoking the concept of ‘joint commitment.’ Her resulting account is, in one important sense, individualistic, and therefore struggles to account for widely held intuitions about the normative significance of social norms. I argue that we can rescue the notion of joint commitment from Valentini’s objections, and incorporate it into a version of her account that preserves its insights.

 

Date of Publication
27 May 2024
Volume
46
Pages
67-83