Norm-Like Patterns
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Notes
Hart’s distinction between rules and patterns
The difference, so Hart, is that rules involve ‘an “internal” aspect’; this is specified as ‘a critical reflective attitude to certain patterns of behaviour as a common standard’ which finds its ‘characteristic expression in the normative terminology of ‘ought’ (Hart, 1994, pp. 55–7).
(Hart uses the term ‘habit’ loosely for mere patterns of behaviour.)
In this section, I use some examples of norm change to argue that we need something in between rules and habits. I take this to be a friendly elaboration of Hart’s picture rather than an objection to it. Hart made an analogous point about general acceptance of rules in a modern state. He observed that ordinary citizens may ‘know nothing more about the laws than that they are “the law”’, whereas experts involved in law-making will be guided by knowledge and ‘critical attitudes.’ He stresses that ‘both aspects must be kept in view if we are to see this complex social phenomenon for what it actually is’ (Hart, 1994, p. 61).
Normative Decoupling
Butterfill and Michael (submitted) use the term normative decoupling to label cases where agents’ actions
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are normatively catalytic: they increase the probability of others conforming to a particular behavioral pattern, thereby upholding that pattern;
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are independent of the agents’ intentions concerning the pattern, and of beliefs about others’ preferences concerning the pattern, in the sense that an external intervention on those attitudes would not have changed the probability of actions of those types occurring (where ‘intervention’ is understood in the ‘atomic’ sense of Pearl (2000, p. 70) as a precisely targeted modification of just one variable); and
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have the purpose of upholding that pattern (in one of the senses we shall enumerate below).
Norm-like Patterns
‘... are patterns of behavior which exist in part because of actions performed with the purpose of upholding conformity to the pattern; such actions may include rewarding conformity, punishing violations or simply conforming to the pattern.’ The agents who uphold must also be subjects of the pattern.