Normativity is Dead

So, here I am in Chicago, trying to make sense of a connection that recently occurred to me. I read somewhere (I'll try to find it, and when I do I'll make note of it) that normativity and aesthetics are somewhat similar. My current thought is that normativity is actually better expressed as aesthetics coupled with positive statements. I'm not sure this matters, or if it is at all original, but it interests me, and it has proved difficult to pin down my thoughts.

First, a few definitions. Normative statements are "ought" statements. Traditionally, they are contrasted with positive statements, which merely report a fact. My conception of aesthetics is broad, at least for my current purposes. It includes all preferences. It would thus include tastes for food and art, but also for health and politics and wealth distribution. I hope to show that normative statements are in fact merely a specific combination of aesthetics with a positive statement about the world, and are thus not fundamentally distinct from aesthetics.

Here's how I think the two interact. Aesthetics determine the optimal state of the world; normativity provides factual statements about how to move toward the desired outcome. To put it another way: any normative statement can be converted into a positive statement with the addition of an expression of preference. "You should do y" is a normative statement, but "Assuming you desire x, you should do y" is a positive statement. It might be false, but it is a factual statement about cause and effect. Thus, once you specify a value system, normative statements are obsolete; they can be replaced by positive statements, the aesthetic part of which might be implicit.

For an individual, then, it's somewhat meaningless to talk about normative statements (it is an open question whether people are individuals in this sense, but that's a post for another time). An individual has a value system and knowledge about cause and effect. Given these, normative statements are superfluous. Similarly, within a community of shared values, normative statements are actually positive statements with implicit aesthetic elements. Within a corporation, for instance, it might be taken for granted that profits should be maximized, so statements like "We should build a processing facility in New York" are actually to be taken as (possibly controversial) factual claims about the world. The only dispute is whether this action is actually profit-maximizing, not whether profits should be maximized.

What about communities without shared values? I think normative statements are not so much meaningless as futile in this context. Why should I care about the preferences of another, except in taking them into account for the purposes of advancing my own preferences? It might thus be valuable for me to know that someone else prefers cheap bananas, but it's hard to see how that fact is somehow binding on me.

Of course, values can be encoded into law, at which point they are reflected in imperative statements that are highly relevant to everyone bound by the law. Imperative statements, though, are really just positive statements about the consequences of particular actions. They should be taken into account no differently from other factual statements about consequences, except that of course they might be more or less credible in different situations. The "normativity" of law, then, comes in with its promulgation, not its exercise, and it is not distinct from the values of its creator (except as distorted by the political process).

So that's where I am: struck by the confluence of aesthetics and normativity, but unable to piece it all together into a coherent idea. I guess my tentative conclusion is that normative statements are generally unhelpful except as shorthand for the two components that are more fruitful to think about: the goals that people have, and the facts about the world that are relevant to the achievement of those goals. Normativiy as a distinct concept is dead.