Reflective Situated Normativity

Abstract

Situated normativity is the ability of skilled individuals to distinguish better from worse, adequate from inadequate, appropriate from inappropriate, or correct from incorrect in the context of a particular situation. Situated normativity consists in a situated appreciation expressed in normative behaviour, and can be experienced as a bodily affective tension that motivates a skilled individual to act on particular possibilities for action offered by a concrete situation. The concept of situated normativity has so far primarily been discussed in the context of skilled unreflective action. In this paper, we aim to explore and sketch the role of the concept of situated normativity in characterising more reflective forms of normativity. The goal of the paper is two-fold: first, by showing more reflective forms of normativity to be continuous with unreflective situated normativity, we bring these reflective forms into the reach of embodied accounts of cognition; and second, by extending the concept of situated normativity, new light is thrown on questions regarding reflective forms of cognition. We show that sociomaterial aspects of situations are crucial for understanding more reflective forms of normativity. We also shed light on the important question of how explicit rules can compel people to behave in particular ways.

The causal mind: An affordance-based account of causal engagement

“…In this sense, the causal judgment is incorrect. This is a type of normativity inherently dependent on context, which has been dubbed situated normativity (Rietveld, 2008; Van Den Herik & Rietveld, 2021). We will return to this notion of normativity later.…”

“…There is a clear normative dimension to the things we do embedded in the practices we are part of. This is captured by the notion of situated normativity (Klaassen et al, 2010; Rietveld, 2008; Van Den Herik & Rietveld, 2021), which refers to the normative aspect of cognition in skillful action. This notion implies “distinguishing adequate from inadequate, correct from incorrect, or better from worse in the context of a particular situation.” (Rietveld, 2008).…”

Reflections on the genre of philosophical art installations

“…What is destabilizing on a shorter time scale (the perturbation) can be stabilizing over longer timescales (mastering a new skill) because new ways of living can be explored, tested, and learned from. Where Heft chooses to use a Dreyfus-like formulation, of reflecting, leading to a break in the flow of action, we would rather emphasize that reflection will generate just more responsiveness to affordances and is an activity characterized itself by engagement with affordances, albeit involving what we have elsewhere called “enlanguaged” affordances (Kiverstein & Rietveld, 2020; van den Herik & Rietveld 2021; cf. van Dijk & Rietveld 2021).…”

“…However, an open challenge for SIF would be to develop an affordance-based account of ethical reflection. A recent collaborative paper with Jasper van den Herik on “ reflective situated normativity” does some groundwork for such a development of SIF (van den Herik & Rietveld, 2021).…”

Change-Ability for a World in Flux

“…Merleau-Ponty 1945/2002; Wittgenstein 1953; Dreyfus & Kelly 2007; Sutton 2010; Abramova & Slors, 2015; Gallagher & Ransom 2016; Zahavi 2019; Gallagher 2020; Lebahn-Hadidi 2021). People are generally able to skilfully adjust what they do to fit the particularities of the situation (Rietveld 2008a; Rietveld et al, 2018; Van den Herik & Rietveld 2021). Consider the practice of cycling: to successfully respond to her environment, a cyclist must be prepared to dodge obstacles or come to a sudden halt when the light turns red.…”