The Justification of Norms

Abstract

It is only in the last ten years that logicians have been concerned with the problem of justification, a term still absent in the majority of logic manuals. What traditionally concerns the logician is induction or deduction. Deontic logic treats the obligatory, the permitted or prohibited, i.e., what is regulated by norms, and is not concerned at all with justification. Even if it is mentioned, it is only to be assimilated to a deduction, where a norm may figure among the premises. To justify a norm, in this case, would be to deduce it from a more general and fundamental norm. Concerning the latter, unless it is based upon self-evidence or an intuition sui generis, it will be considered only as the expression of our aspirations, propensities or passions; it means that all rationality is discarded. From this latter perspective, the justification of norms does not arise from philosophy, but from psychology, sociology, history and always supposes an improper passage from what is to what should be. This negation of the possibility of a practical philosophy leads to scepticism; certain people admit it, with a smile, as inevitable, but console themselves by showing that it is not a disadvantage. We can find a characteristic expression of this point of view in Leonard G. Miller’s article ‘Moral Scepticism’ (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 22 (1961) 239–245). Professor Miller defends the thesis that it is meaningless to ask for justifications in the sphere of moral principles.

The original French text appeared in Human Sciences and the Problem of Values, Entretiens in Amsterdam of the International Institute of Philosophy, Nijhoff, The Hague, 1971.