Nature and Normativity: Biology, Teleology, and Meaning (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy)

__Nature and Normativity__ argues that the problem of the place of norms in nature has been essentially misunderstood when it has been articulated in terms of the relation of human language and thought, on the one hand, and the world described by physics on the other. Rather, if we concentrate on the facts that speaking and thinking are activities of organic agents, then the problem of the place of the normative in nature becomes refocused on three related questions. First, is there a sense in which biological processes and the behavior of organisms can be legitimately subject to normative evaluation? Second, is there some sense in which, in addition to having ordinary causal explanations, organic phenomena can also legitimately be seen to happen __because__ they __should__ happen in that way, in some naturalistically comprehensible sense of ‘should’, or that organic phenomena happen __in order to__ achieve some result, because that result should occur? And third, is it possible to naturalistically understand how human thought and language can be legitimately seen as the normatively evaluable behavior of a particular species of organism, behavior that occurs in order to satisfy some class of norms? This book develops, articulates, and defends positive answers to each of these questions. Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 1 Norms and the Response to Norms 12 2 Life and Teleology 36 3 Building an Instrumentally Rational Agent 68 4 Social Animals and Non-Instrumental Norms 108 5 Human Practices and Responsiveness to Two-Dimensional Practical Norms 140 6 Language as a Tool 170 7 Language, Warranted Assertibility, and Truth 206 Bibliography 238 Index 240