Normativity as Measuring Up

In Rules: A Short History of What We Live By, Lorraine Daston traces the origin of the concept of rules back to its use in the basic practice of measuring. She explains that the ancient Greek word for ‘rule’ – kanon – comes from the name of a large and notably straight plant which was used as a measuring rod. The word ‘kanon’ was initially used for rods and eventually for straightedges, both firmly tied to the context of construction (p. 23). While English preserves this origin with one sense of the word ‘ruler’, the concept of a rule has extended far beyond material measurements. We are now more likely to associate rules with regulations, restrictions and obligations than with straightedges. Yet, the ancient idea of rules as something to measure by still reveals something crucial about all rules, as well as about the nature of normativity.

Strikingly in line with Daston’s history of rules, Christine Korsgaard’s brief philosophical history of the problem of normativity starts with sticks. For Korsgaard, the normative problem questions the strange dimension of value and normativity we see in (or project onto) the world: “Where do we get these ideas that outstrip the world we experience and seem to call it into question, to render judgement on it, to say that it does not measure up, that it is not what it ought to be?” (Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, p. 1)

She then illustrates the problem, in its ancient Greek form, with the unavoidable practice of measuring:

Plato became Plato when Socrates made him see the problem. In the Phaedo he asks: why do we say that the two sticks are ‘not exactly equal?’ Instead of seeing two sticks, lying side by side, that’s that, we see them as if they were attempting something, endeavouring to be something that they are not. We see them as if they had in mind a pattern that they were trying to emulate, a pattern of equality that was calling out to them and saying ‘be like me!’ And if we see them this way then the pattern must be in our own minds too.

Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, pp. 1-2

Korsgaard hereby presents the problem of normativity as the puzzle that – at least in our minds – the world is not merely what it is, but is also supposed to be a certain way. When we see two sticks as not equally long, thick or straight, we are measuring one stick relative to the other, identifying a failure to be in line with each other. This emphasises one part of Korsgaard’s question quoted above: it seems possible to us that the world does not measure up. It entails that in addition to the dimension of what is, there is also a dimension of how things ought to be. Since Plato, philosophers have been trying to make sense of that ‘ought’.

If the philosophical problem is that somehow things can fail to measure up, then we solve it by looking for that which we measure by. The abstract puzzle brings us back to the very practical straightedge. Material can fail to measure up to a ruler in a straightforward way – if a wall is not as straight as that which we use to measure it, it is not how it is supposed to be. Things can be incorrect as long as there is something relative to which they are incorrect. In this way, a ruler crosses the supposed gap between ‘is’ and ‘ought’: if there is something to measure by, things can be as they ought to be – relative to this specific standard.

Korsgaard likewise approaches the normative problem as a need for a standard, in particular one to judge our perceptions, desires and actions by. “We need reasons because our impulses must be able to withstand reflective scrutiny. We have reasons if they do” (p. 93). Reflective scrutiny requires having some kind of standard to apply to the case at hand. If our impulses pass this test, they are correct. For Korsgaard, this is all it takes to ground normativity: actions that withstand reflective scrutiny are actions we have reasons to do. We enter the dimension of ‘ought’ when actions are measurable by a standard.

Of course, the difficulty is that not any arbitrary standard will do – what we are looking for is the right standard, a metaphorical equivalent to the truly straight ruler. Just like the ancient Greeks did not want to build their walls in accordance with the shape of just any stick, we do not want to reflect on our impulses based on just any principle or norm. It has to be a norm that tells us what is correct in a relevant sense, a norm that matters. I could decide what to do based on the principle to touch as many orange things as possible. While this will single out one of my potential actions as correct, it does not establish anything about what I have a real reason to do.

I believe this is where the true puzzle of normativity lies. We can see how we can bring correctness and relative ‘oughts’ into the world, but how can there be a correct standard? What do we measure standards by? Korsgaard’s answer (in 1996) is that our identity forms the right standard. If an action measures up to the core of who we are, then it is correct in the sense that matters. This proposal, as any other, invites questions and counterexamples (what if morally abhorrent actions are not at odds with my identity?). In the background looms the mysteriousness of one standard of measurement being fundamentally correct, rather than merely correct relative to another standard.

In the search for the standard of all standards, we should not overlook the significance of the power of all norms and rules to provide a relative ought. At their core, all rules function as a straightedge: we can scrutinise and validate actions and attitudes by applying rules to them. This basic function of measurement makes rules prescriptive – with the capacity for failing to measure up comes the categorisation of something being correct or incorrect (or, realistically, somewhere in between). This is not all there is to normativity; we are dealing here with things being correct relative to some standard which may itself be irrelevant. Nonetheless, this forms the first step towards the more authoritative form of normativity that involves what we truly have reason to do. The puzzling step from ‘is’ to an unqualified ‘ought’ is mediated by the ‘ought-relative-to’. In parallel to how Daston traces a historical path from measuring rods to the concept of universal moral laws, coming to grips with the elusive idea of an authoritative normative standard calls for starting from the simple ruler-like prescriptivity of rules.