On the Concept of Basic Social Norms

In sociology, social philosophy, social ontology, and classical choice theory the notion of a social norm is usually introduced by using a rich normative, semantic, and social vocabulary, while the notions that evolutionary game theory proceeds from seem too poor to elucidate the idea of social norms. In this paper, I suggest to define a notion of social norms that is as basic as possible, in the sense that it relies only on notions like affects, feelings as well as regularities, standards, and corrections of behaviour. These notions suffice to explain non-linguistic traditions, practices, sanctions, and, finally, basic social norms. Two of the aims of the paper are, first, to clarify the idea of genuine normativity and second, to explore whether the sort of normativity involved in basic social norms is part of a bridge between nature and the social realm. 1. Social Norms in Sociology and Social Ontology The concept of social norms is one of the most fundamental notions of social ontology—if not the most fundamental of these notions. The social realm is often identified with the realm of social norms. And yet, if one looks at the leading positions of social ontology, one discovers immediately that there is considerable disagreement about how best to introduce the notion of social norms. What, for instance, should we think about the relation between regularities of behaviour and standards, conventions, rules, norms in general as well as social norms in particular? The great sociologist Max Weber takes the discovery of social rules to be the crucial task of sociology. However, the notion of a social rule is introduced by Weber, not as a fundamental sociological notion, but rather late in his system of basic sociological notions. Weber conceived, first of all, of the social realm as constituted by social actions. According to Weber, actions are a behaviour connected with subjective sense, as he says, that is, with contentful intentions. An action of an agent is social, if the agent makes his actions in part dependent of his interpretation of the actions of other agents. Therefore, social actions can and must be interpreted (‘verstanden’), i.e. the contents of the intention which transforms behaviour into actions can be grasped such that the sensible relation between the actions is universal. But Weber thinks social actions can also be embedded in regularities that reveal, not the reasons, but the causes of the actions. A series of actions is called sense-adequate, if this series can properly