Normativity is usually treated as a problem of foundations. What grounds obligation? Where do norms come from? Why should anyone do anything at all? These questions presuppose that normativity must be imposed from outside the systems it governs — by values, rules, subjects, or representations of how the world ought to be.
This presupposition is mistaken. Normativity does not descend from above. It emerges from intelligibility.
1. Intelligibility Comes First
Before anything can count as right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable, permitted or forbidden, it must first be intelligible. A system must be able to recognise actions, distinctions, and relations as coherent enough to coordinate around.
Intelligibility is not a matter of truth or correspondence. It is the condition under which relations can be sustained, expectations stabilised, and variation registered as meaningful rather than as noise.
Nothing can be demanded of what cannot yet be understood.
2. When Intelligibility Stabilises, Norms Appear
Normativity arises when intelligibility sediments into expectation.
When patterns of coordination repeat successfully, systems come to rely on them. These reliances are not explicit rules; they are practical anticipations. Things are done this way. Deviations are noticeable. Breakdowns matter.
At this point, normativity has already emerged — not as prescription, but as structural pressure. The “ought” appears not because a rule has been stated, but because coordination has become fragile.
Norms are not first imposed and then followed. They are recognised retroactively, when their absence disrupts intelligibility.
3. The Ought as a Signal of Breakdown
The experience of normativity typically arrives as irritation, friction, or concern. Something does not fit. Coordination falters. The field of intelligibility wobbles.
This is why normativity so often feels negative or corrective. It is activated when:
-
expectations fail,
-
distinctions collapse,
-
or actions threaten the stability of shared coordination.
The “ought” is not a command issued in advance. It is a signal emitted by a system under strain.
4. No Values Required
At no point in this process do we need to invoke values as independent entities. What stabilises coordination does so because it works — because it sustains intelligibility over time.
This does not make normativity arbitrary. On the contrary, it anchors it in the actual relational conditions of coordination, rather than in abstract ideals. Norms persist not because they are right, but because they are relationally effective.
Effectiveness here is not instrumental success. It is the maintenance of a shared field of intelligibility.
5. Why This Is Not Relativism
If normativity emerges from intelligibility, does this mean “anything goes”? No — because intelligibility is not freely chosen. It is constrained by sedimentation, material conditions, systemic coordination, and the cuts already in place.
Norms are local, but not arbitrary. They are contingent, but not optional. They can change, but not at will. Their authority comes not from universality, but from the cost of breakdown.
To violate a norm is not to disobey a rule. It is to risk the collapse of coordination.
Conclusion
Normativity does not need foundations. It needs intelligibility that matters.
Once a relational field becomes stable enough to sustain expectations, normativity appears automatically — as pressure, as obligation, as concern for what holds coordination together. The “ought” is not imposed on intelligibility; it is generated by it.
In the next post, we will move from this general account to a specific scale: ethics — understood not as a system of values or principles, but as the local work of maintaining coordination within shared fields of intelligibility.
No comments:
Post a Comment