Jonathan Birch – In the Grip of a Norm

In Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, Allan Gibbard distinguished ‘accepting a norm’ from ‘being in the grip of a norm’. He portrayed the former as a language-dependent and uniquely human phenomenon, and the latter as a non-linguistic phenomenon present in both humans and non-human animals such as dogs. But what is it to be in the grip of a norm? I suggest that this notion encompasses a wide variety of ways in which norms can regulate behaviour ‘beneath the surface’ of an agent’s conscious experience, ranging from bare motivational tendencies to much more sophisticated mechanisms of action guidance. My aim in this paper is to distinguish several grades of normative involvement in the regulation of unreflective behaviour, and to offer a ‘lineage explanation’ of how the complex forms of normative guidance found in modern humans may have evolved from simpler forms.